Bike riding and the loss of a student: Kerry's story

Kerry, originally from Queens, now makes Goshen in Orange County, N.Y. her hometown. She moved there when she was seven. These are her memories of her hometown, Goshen.

Description: Goshen is a small little Puritan society where nothing ever happens. Every knows each other, but doesn't, really. We have a lot of churches and there's no supermarket in my town. There are a lot of little cafes and small businesses that don't matter. If you don't live in the center of Goshen, you pretty much need a car or else you will be bored and resort to drugs. Basically we have a big drug problem in our schools. Whenever I ask people why they do them, they say "What else is there to do here?"

Positive: When I first moved there, the first thing that my parents did to distract me and my older brother David was to take the training wheels of our bikes to get us out of the house. I was seven and he was ten.  We learned to ride our bikes on our own. I didn't need any help, David needed a push and help stopping though. 

That's when I started to love riding my bike. First, it was just riding around my cul de sac in circles. Then, when they changed the railroad tracks that ran by my house into a bike path, it became my escape. 

You could go two ways from my house. If I went right, I could go to the store, get candy or ice cream, and my parents would never know. If I went left I could go as far as Chester which is what I did a lot with my dad. We rode a lot together when I was little. He used to try to teach me endurance by saying if we made it all the way to the pizza place we could get pizza. I would complain the whole way, but I would make it there. I think it was a good lesson for me. And it was really scenic. Sometimes we'd pass farms, sometimes we'd pass the highway or big, giant ponds. Before they put up fencing, you could just go get lost for awhile.

Negative: Basically, there was this kid that wasn't known for more than just being the quiet kid in high school. He went to high school after I had graduated, but I still heard about it. He committed suicide, left a note for his parents and everything. 

I don't know much of the details, but the biggest problem was how the school handled it. The administration wouldn't let students wear shirts that were in remembrance of him because they thought it would be promoting suicide and they sent letters home, I believe. They said that he couldn't even get a moment of silence on the loud speaker, which is what the students were demanding. 

There was another girl that was a senior when I was a junior who went to SUNY Oswego and died of meningitis. When she was at Goshen High School she was soccer player. she was very well known and popular. But being popular is vague, because to some of my friends she was a bitch. I think that's important, otherwise I wouldn't have said that. For her, they canceled Spirit Week. We weren't allowed to decorate the halls and we weren't allowed to participate in our clubs and activities. Every day that week they made an announcement for her. They even made bracelets for her. I have one.

I think it's just sad how one person's life is worth more than another just because of the way their life was taken from them. 

Bottom line: You have to make your own adventures to live there.