So one of the latest bits of juicy gossip that’s been circulating on the TV airwaves has been the official announcement of (drum roll please) Snooki’s pregnancy.  Who’s that you ask?  Why Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi from that little show called “Jersey Shore” on MTV.  This hard partying girl recently announced and confirmed that she was engaged and 4 months pregnant with their first child.  Her future on the show is now highly doubtful.

A lot of opinions have been thrown out since Snooki made her announcement, some saying that were congratulatory, some that were condemning her, but the one thing that I read that stood out to me was a comment Snooki said her father made:

Snooki said, “My dad was upset.  He said, ‘You have your whole life ahead of you.’  We didn’t talk for a week.”

To me, that was the most interesting part of all the stories and opinions I’ve heard.  The idea that you have your whole life ahead of you.  Why get married and have a baby at 25 years old?  Not a child for sure, but an adult yet?  That’s debatable.

The whole thing got me thinking about age and the milestones we reach as we go through as we get older.  I thought about it even on a recent Friday evening when I left my office and decided to walk over to CVS to refill a prescription.  As I walked over to the pharmacy, I kept noticing all the NYU students and 20-something year old’s ready to start their Friday night.   I started walking west on Bleecker Street, a pretty popular and famous street in New York City.  I kept walking west, and stepped more and more into the West Village, I kept passing by bar after bar after bar.  Many of which I used to frequent years ago when I was 23 or 24 years old and was fresh out of college and working.  I remember those days clearly and vividly as if it was yesterday.  I even remember a time when I went drinking with a girlfriend at a bar precisely on Bleecker Street and at the end of the night I went home with my belly button pierced.  Yeah.  Parents were not too pleased with that.

But at the same time, isn’t that part of being young and experimenting and trying new things?  I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with taking those years in your early to mid 20’s to explore.  And explore can mean a variety of things: Exploration of your likes and dislikes, exploration of different worlds, exploration of foods, exploration of drinks.  It’s a time when you are young and have the energy to be open to trying and tasting the variety in life and it can leave you as a better informed adult as you enter the next phase of your life (usually a more stable existence involving marriage and children).

I’m going to be 32 years old in a couple of months and in the past 4 months I moved to a great position with a prestigious company.  A couple of months later I got engaged and about a month later I started booking venues and shopping for a house.  It doesn’t get much adult than that.  All of a sudden, instead of looking at apartments and checking out what neighborhood the place was in and how close it was to a west side subway line, now I’m looking at actual houses and asking questions like: How much are the taxes?  How good is the school system?  How are the neighbors?  Needless to say, my priorities have certainly changed in the past 6 months.

If you would’ve told me at 24 years old that I would be where I am now, I would’ve been shocked and probably would not have been able to wrap my mind around any of it.  And that’s totally logical.  In my 20’s, I was still wide eyed and discovering…life.  Discovering more of who I was and what was out there to experience.  I was going out, I was visiting college friends, I was making new friends through each job, I was chopping my hair off, I was traveling around Europe and Africa, I was getting my belly button pierced, I was going to concerts and music festivals on the west coast, midwest and east coast, I was traveling through Japan and Australia for work, I was getting tattooed. 

Now, I wasn’t peeing on porches, waking up next to strangers, or taking shots to relieve UTI’s (typical Snooki behavior).  I was never THAT type of girl.  But I was living a fairly carefree life…

I was experiencing life at at its fullest and for better or for worse, I came away learning more about myself and what ultimately makes me happy and fulfilled.  And with time, those things are always evolving.  So now at almost 32 years old and engaged, I look at all the 25 year olds on my way home that are getting ready for a Friday night of partying.  More power to them, but I’m heading home to pick up a pizza.  Pie.  And then spend a relaxing weekend with my fiance before having to start an exhausting work week all over again.

So is Snooki’s dad right by being upset?  And thinking that she had her whole life ahead of her and it’s too soon to settle down with a husband and a child? 

There is no right or wrong answer to that obviously, because every person is different.  Every situation is different.  But here’s hoping that in her 25 years on this earth she’s lived enough of the carefree lifestyle that she’s fully ready to move on to the next milestone in her life.  I know I am.

I’ve often been accused of being such a city girl and such a “New Yorker”, but as time goes on, I find that comment to be more and more true and more and more a compliment.  The topic of New York City has been weighing in my head lately, partly because of my new office location which places me in New Jersey and partly because of today’s anniversary of the Word Trade Center attacks.  When I sit back and I think about it, I cant really find any suitable comparison for New York City and that is coming from someone that considers herself a total New York City girl.

I was born and raised on the island of Manhattan where I grew up my whole life in an urban inner city neighborhood.  While during my upbringing I lacked certain things (a backyard most noticeably) my parents did an excellent job of never making me feel that I was lacking anything in my life.  They also did their best to guard me from some of evils during that time, especially since the 1980’s and early 1990’s were not the best of times for NYC.  I can still remember trash cans being lined up in the middle of street and being set on fire, watching the Crown Heights riots on TV and my parents constant annoyance of the tires on the car being slashed. 

Definitely not the best of times.  But with time, and a change in guards, the city changed and became the tourist attraction that it is today.  No longer was it the seedy environment shown in such iconic movies like Taxi Driver but now the glamorous backdrop for the series Sex and the City.  How times had changed.

Every summer that I came home from college, I would usually go to a temp agency that would place me at all sorts of various jobs around the city.  Once I graduated college and officially moved back, Manhattan made up a lot of my memories: Coming back home to Inwood/Washington Heights, hanging out on the roof of my friend’s brownstone in Harlem, Having brunch on the Upper West Side, Temping in Soho, Chelsea, Tribeca, Working in Midtown East. 

There is probably not an area of Manhattan that hasn’t been touched by me at some point and while I did not live the Sex and the City life (I mean, come on, who in the world can?) I did get to enjoy the perks of living in a buzzing, but now safer, city.

But as many forget, Manhattan isn’t the city.  Oh no, no, no.  New York City is made up of the (5) boroughs and I know them well.

I always have a positive associated with my backyard borough, the Bronx (the only borough requiring a grand entrance with “THE” Bronx), which is close enough to me that I could feasibly walk to from my area of Manhattan.  Looking back, I have wonderful memories of the Bronx since I spent my high school years there, at a Catholic all girls school. 

I know, I know.  You would think from reading that line that I would have horrific memories of that time, but I actually look back on my high school years fondly, as a time when I started to learn who I was and what direction I wanted my life to go into.

Well, at least as much as you can learn and plan at seventeen years old.

The Bronx also reminds me of walking with friends on Fordham Road to go shopping (window shopping, that is), being driven to school by my dad during which we would have the best conversations, going home on the BX12 bus, going to a Yankee game (only to support my sister really, since I’m a NY Mets fan), Arthur Avenue authentic Italian food and canolis, and family summer days spent all the way out on City Island for seafood and ice cream.  Remember the movie A Bronx Tale?  With Robert DeNiro as a bus driver and his route?  That’ll give you an idea of City Island.

But my family memories extended beyond the Bronx and over to Queens, where my family and I would often load up the minivan and drive over to see our beloved NY Mets hopefully win their games.

Now I know what you might say: How could someone raised so close to the Bronx be a NY Mets fan and not a Yankee fan?  Well, I can’t speak to that other than I was raised as a child to respect and love the NY Mets and as they say, the faith is hard to shake.  I admit that I know WAY too much about the 1986 championship Mets, but that’s the environment I was raised in and a large part of my memories involve driving over to Shea Stadium to watch the games with my family.  One of my fondest memories is being at Mets vs Braves game where they came back from an 8 run deficit to come back and win the game in the eighth inning.  On Fireworks Night no less! 

Memories like those and the times I spent hanging out with one of my best friends in Jackson Heights and Elmhurst will always keep Queens in my heart.  Not to mention it was the setting for one of the best shows in TV history, All in the Family (in my humble opinion).

Then there’s that new hipster paradise that is Brooklyn.  Well, that’s not true.  There are many parts to Brooklyn and I spent a good deal of time there, particularly a few years back when I attended classes at Pratt Institute in the Fort Greene area (read: borderline Bed Stuy) area of Brooklyn.  Those were days when I explored Brooklyn by checking out Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Redhook, Bedford Stuyvescent, and East New York.  Through friends, I later spent time exploring and learning about the areas deep into Brooklyn of Bay Ridge and Brighton Beach, areas that was used as the setting for one of my favorite movies Saturday Night Fever.

I also have to admit, my favorite city politician represents Brooklyn in the form of Borough President, Marty Markowitz.  Mr. Markowitz has a reputation for being quite the character and I’ll never forget when during the MTA transit strike, he planted himself on the Brooklyn Bridge with hot chocolate and coffee to greet Brooklyn-ites on their walk back home into their borough from a long day at work saying, “Welcome to Brooklyn!”.

Yeah, he’s a character.

And that’s it right?  Nope, we still have Staten Island.  Yes, lovely Staten Island.  I have to be honest and admit that my interaction with the borough of Staten Island is almost non-existent since if I did ever go to Staten Island, it was as a small child.  But it does have to be acknowledged that most of the “Jersey Shore” crew comes from the wonderful area of Staten Island so I suppose I should be grateful for the hours of entertainment that these Staten Islanders have brought me.  Not to mention, a perfect hometown for the main character in the movie Working Girl (another of my favorite movies).

So there you have it.  A long love letter to my city.  I know that for many it can come off as conceited and pompous to shout from the rooftops the accolades of my city.  But on a day like today, that’s filled with so much sadness and reflection, I want to reflect on how wonderful this city is and that no matter what happened 10 years ago, it hasn’t deterred it from being one of the most diverse, dynamic, powerful, intellectual and vibrant cities in the world and it will never be kept down.  No matter where I end up in my life, I will always be a New Yorker in my heart.

And that’s all I had to say.  I think I’ll now enjoy my lazy Sunday and relax and listen to some Billy Joel.  Yeah, I’m that hardcore.

I <3 you New York City.

XoXo,

Carol