Memoir #1: The Abandoned Hospital (Real)
Before high school, I had never been one to take risks, to adventure, or to explore (nor had the type of friends which would push me to do so in any way). Then, in late freshman year of high school, May of 2015, some new friends informed me that they had discovered an abandoned hospital in Forest Hills, along with a way in. At the time, my parents were very strict with me, so I had to plan out a strategy to avoid them finding out- timing when to get there and leave, and how long I could disable the tracker on my phone without them taking notice.
We scaled the 8 foot chain link fence, then quickly ran from the gate to an open door about 30 feet away. As soon as we closed the door behind us, we were immediately submerged into pitch black darkness, and the ominous chill of the room stood the hairs of our arms on end. Treading over dust, leaves, and shattered glass, guided by iPhone flashlights, we made it to an extremely narrow, winding emergency staircase. We ascended the staircase one by one, eventually reaching one of the upper floors, opening a hatch to the sudden reappearance of natural light.
Here, on what I think was the third or fourth floor, we found wheelchairs eerily scattered up and down the hallway. Loose cables and exposed piping snaked around from the ceilings above us. One room saw hundreds of old Model 500 telephones scattered across the floor, another covered in old destroyed papers and various medical equipment. Graffiti lined the walls of the building, of which my friend contributed to, graffitiing the wall with a can of red spray paint, of which I had stolen from my attic the night previously: “P O P P Y 🙂”, what he referred to as his ‘tagline’ back then. Meanwhile, I used a bottle opener I used to keep on my keychain to etch my initials into one of the walls. Then I encased the etching with one of an equal-armed cross— a symbol I used to be infatuated with at the time for no particular reason other than finding the design interesting.
Soon after, in accordance to my plan of avoiding being caught by my parents by managing to get home at an unsuspecting time, I had to leave. Leaving the hospital, this time all alone now, a bit of paranoia began to build. After exiting the outside door, I thought I heard workers yelling at me, and made a break for the fence, ripping my shirt to halfway up my side in the process of climbing over. A simultaneously nerve-wracking, but exciting experience, this adventure to the abandoned hospital would prove to lead to many other adventures, and much more risk-taking in the following years.
Memoir #2: Lost In Rome (Fake)
The day before Easter Sunday found us in Rome’s Piazza Navona at dusk on the final day of our Spring Break trip to Italy. The trip had been the best week of my life so far, managing to see some of the most beautiful art and architecture in the world, and allowing me to return back to my family’s ancestral country- the first in my immediate family to do so in generations. Everything down to the weather was picture perfect; a spring warmth blending with a subtle evening breeze. Here, myself and our school group of about 40 students had some time to split up and explore the Piazza. Some people drew, some got food, some shopped for souvenirs. We weren’t supposed to leave the piazza, but one of my best friends and I wanted a chance to explore the city on our own- no tour guides, no teachers. So we strayed quite a bit away from the group to do some sketches, and checked out the interior of a nearby church while a Saturday evening mass was taking place.
Earlier in the day, we had been to St. Peter’s Basilica, and when it was time to head back to the bus, my friend, mistakenly believing that was where our group was reconvening, asked for directions to St. Peter’s. We found ourselves attempting to navigate narrow Roman cobblestone side streets, everything cast in orange and yellow hues from the sunset, combining with streetlamp and shops beginning to turn on their night lighting. We stopped in a few shops along the way, however, amassing a small collection of souvenirs ranging from postcards to books to shot glasses. We were starting to become ridiculously lost, but at the same time were either in denial of accepting that fact, or just too amazed at the places we were exploring to care.
Halfway to St. Peter’s Basilica, we found ourselves getting frantic phone calls from a couple of our friends. Not only had we been walking half a mile in the wrong direction, but we now found out, believing we were supposed to meet at 8:00, instead of 7:00, we were now nearly half an hour late. We frantically tried to find a place with WiFi so we could Google Maps our way back to the piazza. Luckily managing to find a coffee shop relatively quickly, we then made a mad dash back towards the real meeting spot.
We finally making it back to the group, but drastically late. I couldn’t tell if my heart was pounding from the run back to the piazza, the anxiousness of our lateness, or simply the excitement of our adventures. The teachers in our group were furious that we had strayed so incredibly far from where we were supposed to be, but standing in a place like Rome, we were still too in awe of our surroundings, and everything we had seen in the past week to really care.
[Left: Bottle Opener (Real, Memoir #1); Right: Michelangelo Book (Fake, Memoir #2)]
