Exposition Park
When I was a little kid, I used to go to Exposition Park—the Coliseum, USC, that whole area. It’s one of those places that doesn’t feel like a location. It feels like a chapter.
Back then I had severe asthma. So bad I skipped kindergarten. I was always in the emergency room. I didn’t even have a measurement for danger. I remember telling my mom, “Why are you taking me to the hospital in the middle of the night?” And she’d be like, “Because you’re going purple.” And I’d say, “I feel fine.”
Next thing I know I’m in the car in the dark—beanie, oversized jacket, scarves—watching streetlights go by, wondering why it’s always nighttime when I end up in the hospital.
But even as a kid, I’d try to make it into something: I’m gonna get a toy or a sticker. I’m gonna run around in my Superman underwear while they take my vitals. Walk forward, walk backward… all that.
Then my uncle came from Mexico and stayed with us for a while. My parents told him: “He’s got an inhaler. He’s not supposed to be outside. Don’t let him run. Use the inhaler two or three times. Keep him calm. Don’t agitate him.”
He said, “Cool.”
Then the second they leave he tells me, “Go get your sweats, your jacket, your beanie, your inhaler. We’re going to the park. We’re going to run.”
I was like, “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
He said, “They’re overprotecting you.”
So we went.
I’d run until the air started getting thin. Then I’d walk. Then inhaler. Then run again. Then walk again. Over and over. I don’t remember if it was weeks or months — the memory is foggy — but I remember what it felt like: like I was finally confronting the thing instead of living under it.
As I got older, I started outgrowing the asthma. And I kept going back to Exposition Park throughout the years to run, because it felt like family. It had a special place in my heart. It was where I first started not being a victim of my own body.
And I still remember the little kid questions too—seeing those naked statues in front of the Coliseum and being like, “Why are there naked people in front of this building?” And someone explaining the Olympics were there, and the flame, and all that history.
Little kid years, man. That’s how I remember shit.
Question: What place takes you back instantly—and what part of you lives there?
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