And Then There's the Moment When You Pull Out A Photo Album When You Were 19 and Think, Uh - Oh

This is the new reality of Crandall in 2015. With a 19-year old in my house and suddenly having to think like an authority over a 19 year-old in my house, I couldn't help to remember that when I was 19 years old, I moved to London on an exchange for a semester.

Trust me. We look highly innocent here, but we weren't. I like to think that times were more innocent in 1992, but when we first arrived to London we had to circle the city for hours because the Irish Republican Army had bombed a part of the city where we were supposed to live. Yes, things were political back then, too.

But that wasn't on our mind. We were in a new country to study the culture, to read good books and to hopefully find a pint or two we enjoyed (as we were of legal age to drink).

Note: My Wigmore Place crew introduced me to more experiences in six months than I've had in my entire life. Actually, these were my roommates - the others on our trip offered even more tomfoolery and when I put it in perspective to having Chitunga - age 19 - in my house now, I am a little overwhelmed.

My trip to London as a sophomore in college was the single most, life-changing experience of my life. In one semester, I grew more comfortable in my own being, met Carol Boyce Davies and Beryl Gilroy who changed my global and cultural perspective, and learn to be intellectually and emotionally independent. I fell in love with one girl, then another girl, and then a third and fourth.
Actually, I learned from this trip to simply fall in love with life.

And that was 22 years ago. I think about this one semester and can honestly attest that it pushed me onto the path that I'm on today. In 1992, I began to learn more that the world was much larger than my Clay, New York upbringing. While I was studying in England, civil wars were occurring in Africa - wars that eventually uprooted the families of so many of the young people I've worked with over the last 7 years (including Chitunga, who was born out of the aftermath of the Congolese conflicts). It is interesting to me to note that while learning about colonialism and post colonialism as an academic exercise, real lives of African youth were actually being created. The seed planted at that time is now the series of trees that stand in the forest of everything I do.

Yes, 19. So innocent. Yet, I was focused then (and a bit of the uptight, do-gooder who tried to real sanity into the insane). Still, I definitely was a part of it all and I guess I should say, "I'm so lucky things didn't turn out worse."

In the meantime, that's not the way it's going to be in my house (I write, while cracking up. Ugh).