Green Boxes

 

The Green Box was the only meeting place my cousins and I had. A piece of infrastructure of the city that powered the homes we felt confined in, could not talk candidly in, or be ourselves in whatever we were morphing that self to be. The only place in the neighborhood where we could sit and think and talk away from scrutiny. For many rural and suburban kids, these ordinary structures - the parking lots, parks, woods, and utility boxes - become the places where we adolescents are “in conflict acute- between the constraining powers and the forces of appropriation.” Therefore, I wonder what the value is in creating “appropriate” spaces for adolescents that will inevitably be interlinked with capitalism and consumerism when, ultimately, as true to the rebellious nature of a pre-teen, this demographic will carve out and define their own hangout spaces. They will find green boxes.