Me, minding my own business on the street: 🎵popular song lyrics🎵
Rando: Excuse me sir
Me: Sup
Rando: Would you mind taking a picture of me in front of this school?
Me, quietly: bold of you to assume I won’t run off with your phone
Rando: What was that?
Me: Happy to do it! What’s the occasion?
Rando: I used to go to school here. Years and years and years ago. Used to play behind this fence here… spent a lot of time here. Used to be murder street.
Me: When was that?
Rando: HAH. Loooong before you were born, honey. It’s so different now. All the houses are just gone, and it’s a park now! And there was also the Martha Washington school…
Me: That one’s still going, too! My friend Natalie once thought that was a prison.
Rando: Hah… sure looks like it, doesn’t it?
Me: And maybe there’s still crime here, but I haven’t had anything unpleasant happen in the past few years I’ve been in the neighborhood.
Rando: When did you move here?
Me: 2017, a couple blocks away from here.
Rando: And you like it?
Me: It’s mostly quiet, the neighbors have been good to me, and I get to have lovely conversations with folks like yourself!
Rando: Well aren’t you sweet.
Rando: Still, I knew a lot of people who died here.
Me: 