In Spring of 1993 I took a job working at Jonathon's in UConn's Student Union every Friday night from 6:00pm until closing (around 1:00am). My first night there as I looked over the lines of people waiting for food or just socializing, Richard Marx's "Endless Summer Nights" kept playing in my head. The following week in a similar scene Go West's "King of Wishful Thinking" did the same. One night I noticed a girl being carried around on a guy's back. At first due to their comfortable behavior concerning their surroundings I assumed they were older than me but when I thought about it, I figured that given that I was 21 at the time, the odds of this being true was only 25%.
"My parents, brother, and I left Iran in 1980, shortly after the revolution. After a brief stay in Italy, we packed all our belongings once again and headed west to the exotic and the unknown: Vancouver. We had recently been accepted as landed immigrants, meaning Canada graciously opened its doors and we gratefully accepted; we arrived at Vancouver International Airport on my 10th birthday, three suitcases and one sewing machine in tow. After respectful but intense questioning at immigration, we were dropped off at a hotel on Robson Street, which was then still a couple years shy of becoming the fashionable tourist hub it is today. We were jetlagged, culture shocked, and hungry, so that first night, my father and brother courageously ventured out into the wild in search of provisions. I fell asleep before they returned. The next morning, I woke up at 5 a.m. and ravenously feasted on a cold Quarter Pounder with cheese and limp French fries that had been left by my beds...
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