“All of the houses in the area had the same floor plan: a hallway in the middle with doors that open into each room. The rooms were not connected, one could only enter each from the hallway. At one end of the hall was the parent’s bedroom, on the other end, the living room. In between were the children’s rooms, the kitchen, the bathroom and the entrance hall. All of the houses had two children’s rooms. All of the houses were on lots with one opening only: the driveway into the street. All of the driveways were built for two cars. Most families had two kids and two cars. My brother and I each had our own room. All our friends had their rooms in the same part of the house as we did. All of the streets led to the highway nearby, which connected the suburban area to the rest of the city – to the industrial area, the service area, the commercial center, and the area with museums, a park, and a school. That's where we went to school. We were in different grades. Each subject had a different room: language, geography, history, mathematics, sports. ‘The way you move is the way you think’, the sports teacher once said, reminding us to straighten our backs. We would do homework at home, each in our own room. We would go there when we were angry, or when we were told to go there when we didn’t behave. ‘Come back out when you remember your manners’, my mother used to say. Sometimes we would play there. I once made a drawing on the wall over my bed. My parents got angry when they saw it. ‘I thought it was my room’, I argued, very upset. ‘It is, but its our house’, they said.”