A monumental love, maybe.
I popped my DC cherry. And I have mixed emotions about it.
I’ve been in DC for the past few months finishing out my Masters program at Medill. I am one of those rare people who never went to DC on the obligatory 8th grade class trip. Instead my Catholic grade school schlepped, or rather bused, all 12 of us out to Toronto (yes my 8th grade class was really small and it is really easy to be popular when there are only three other girls…in retrospect, great for the esteem). Anyway, I really, really like DC but I can’t help but sprinkle in (annoyingly I might add) when I am talking to DC residents, “Oh! But in Chicago we do YOU FILL IN THE BLANK.”
Being out here is kind of like being in a brand new relationship. The first month here I was blown away at how different it was from Chicago and all I wanted to do was spend every waking minute having mind-blowing “DC tourist days.” I couldn’t get enough of the city… and how beautiful it was… and different. It was settled. I was moving to DC and swapping Michigan Ave. for Pennsylvania Ave. I already felt more sophisticated.
Then the normalcy period hit me and I realized that the city is actually kind of small, not to mention that political talk here is as commonplace as bitching about the Cubs and we all know how old that gets. Additionally, I started to become someone I didn’t think I was. I remember alarming myself one night when I asked a friend who works for a prominent senator in all seriousness to “give me all the juicy Senate gossip.” It was a moment of self-reflection and I just turned slowly to stare out the window at lovely DC in all its glory and started to feel…um…slightly dissatisfied.
Well, that period lasted for a bit and I think if I were here for an extended period of time, DC and I would eventually break up. But for now, I am back at the appreciation stage. DC is really a fabulous city, despite the lack of hair product on the men. It takes all the will power in me not to load up my purse with gallons of Crew and pomade every weekend and start feverishly applying it to the product starved, Robert Redfordesque hairstyles that DC men (abhorrently) seem to favor.
But being out here has definitely made my heart grow fonder for the Windy City. I have spent a few of my remaining Fridays out in DC and have loved every minute of them. I think everyone should live in DC once for a period of time. But maybe like your first true love, where in your heart you always kind of want to end up with them…I too, want to eventually end up with My kind of town…
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Patrice Poltzer
Patrice Poltzer is a graduate student at Northwestern's Medill school of Journalism and a life-long native of Chicago. While some may find it weird that she has anxiety about turning 30 – which is not old- those who know her remember when she cried on her fourteenth birthday because she was upset about “ the passage of time.” Weird? Perhaps.
She is a freelance writer with a concentration in broadcast and multimedia journalism. She used to host an entertainment show called, "Nude Hippo: Your Chicago Show" and yes, she realizes that is a really strange name.
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