Essay Start:

Don’t you love going to the grocery store? Isn’t fun to grab all the food you love and enjoy? Maybe you decide to grab some few things like snickers, donuts, soda, and peanut butter. Regardless of what might happen to your health, you might say “I’d rather die happy.” Why should we bother eating healthy anyway? What if you knew that most of the very foods you love shortened your life expectancy by an average of one to four years, would you still eat it then? So I wonder what would happen if I told you that eating healthier could increase your life expectancy by the same amount and plus some. Would you start considering it?

                Now I’m not saying you have to drop all your bad habits. I’m talking about a fair moderation of both food types, while it would still be benefitting you. Enticing?

Here I am once again sitting on the street side bench waiting for my friend to show up in his car. Watching the people slowly walk by without a care in the world. I too had not a care in the world as I wait. One person had caught my eye and was gunning right towards me carrying an army of plastic bags. Step by step I watched the movements of a rhinoceros stampeding among the turf we walk every day. It wasn’t that I would want this person to catch my eye, it just so happened that this person was wearing a ragged shirt with stripes and pink skimpy shorts during the middle of winter.

As this person sat down I swear the weight of the bench shifted tremendously. Then out of one of her white wonders emerged a bucket of Kentucky fried chicken. Gruesomely in front of everyone the baboon devoured the chicken while laughing hysterically to something on a Zune.  Huge chucks of chicken shot out of her mouth like an erupting volcano. Inch by inch I moved near the bench’s edge hoping to avoid the scatter of insanity being dispersed from this person’s possessions. Happily entertained she seemed to be enjoying herself at the cost of everyone else’s expense. After finishing her maniacal laughter that only a hyena would enjoy she looked over at me.

“What’s his problem”, she thinks to herself as she reaches for another piece of delectation. She pushes back her long black hair to remove an earpiece. I looked away and out towards the street so fast I pulled a neck muscle, all in hopes that she wouldn’t talk to me.

“Boy, do you have a problem? Are you judging me boy? Think your something special sitting there?”

I slowly turn my head back towards her a like rusted piece of clockwork trying so hard not to work when it has no choice but to work.

“Cat got your tongue, huh?”

I stare blankly like an artist at a canvas with no imagination.

She lets out a type of disgusted sigh. Maybe it was sounding something more like an hmmph or hrmm. “Look at you, sitting her judging the people that walk by, you must think your something special, a little twig placed on a piece of wood. Trying to understand those people up and about while you’re wearing a simple minded brown colored jacket, and black slackly ass jeans. You must really be a judgmental prick with a magnify glass under your scope sitting here thinking you’re better off. You’re like an owl on a high perch ready to be shot down, and I’ll be waiting and laughing”

With that, she got up and marched off with her head held high enough to see up her nose, smug and proud she strolled away.

I just looked around, not sure what to think. All I was doing was waiting for my friend in his car. Silently I sat there dozing off into a daydream or trance letting it not bother me. I laugh to myself on the inside where my grin grew five times bigger. A polar opposite, just walked away. Rude and predictable, she didn’t nail anything in descriptive detail but that shown on the surface. With those thoughts in mind, I chuckled heartily as my friend pulled open the car door.

When I first moved to Pittsburgh everything was new. Everyday my roommate Tim and I would go out exploring different parts of the city. We found many different places to chill out and relax at, or go do something. Tim and I are used to the variety of things you can do in New York, and sometimes feel like there is nothing here in this city. It almost seems too quiet at times, yet more laid back.

It seemed like every time we went out we would eventually get lost in the night. There are many bridges we’ve noticed in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately for us, we kept thinking it was the same bridge. We would constantly back track when we wanted to head back until we would come to a bridge; we had been assuming it was the same bridge from before. Only to find out it wasn’t and end up lost, again.

Finally Tim had noticed that if we followed the green lights in the sky it would lead us right back to our doors. We use this landmark as our own personal beacon.

Pittsburgh has had its own influence on me in the little time I have spent here. So have many of the cities I’ve lived within. It’s not the cities themselves but the people who thrive in the cities that influence each other. The way of life, the way of thinking all comes from their own special origins.

Originally I was from a town called Elizabethtown. My dad left my mom fending for my younger brother and myself. Over the many years the three of us travelled to many different places for work. Each and every environment influences who you are because of the people around you, not just the cities themselves. Along the way I’ve made and lost many friends.

Before coming to the Pitts, I was living in the most recent residence of Fleetwood. I had taken the year off to decide what I actually wanted to do with myself. As I paced the rooms of my home contemplating, everyone I knew and personally talked to had moved on. Silently standing still I could look out my window and notice the town before myself.

Towns and cities have a nice atmosphere to them; different and the same; the people are likewise.

The city may have the best bars, sports, theatres, food chains, and culture, but without the people, what does it have? The people who strive in each and every place design an outlay of their world. If you’ve been to cities like perhaps; New York City, you could say that there is a more confident and hustle-like energy in the air. Pittsburgh has its own influence. The people seem to be more care-free in most areas that I have visited. There is almost this laid back feeling towards the ending of their weekends; whereas in the beginning of the weekend the night life on Southside is quite the treat.

Without these people in the city there wouldn’t be any influences, any atmosphere, anything worth the time or place. Cities, towns, environments, whatever it may be and no matter how influential, it is nothing without the people who strive on the sidewalks. Even your closest friends that you have now, back home, or in your own family, shape who you were; who you are now; who you will become.

Pittsburgh has had its own influence on me. Those influences are mine to hold onto.

But it’s not the only thing that influences; so who influences you?