In most respects, my childhood was normal. Every day, my mom would pack my lunch, and my dad and our dog, Reeses, would walk me to Cole Elementary School. When we reached the spot where the chain-link fence met the blacktop, we’d wave goodbye. Then, with my lunch pail in hand, I would join the hordes of elementary school children and line up to wait with my classmates for our teacher to walk us, single-file, into our classrooms.

But recess and P.E. were less normal, even if I didn’t notice it at the time. My classmates and I would grab the essentials for playing outdoors: red bouncy balls, jump ropes, and basketballs. And a handful of people would reach for their inhalers. When I asked what the inhalers were, the response I got was “medicine.” For what? I asked. To breathe, was the answer. I left it at that.

Sometimes, my friends with asthma would have to stop for a moment while we were playing tag or soccer, or they would walk when we were supposed to be running laps. Once, during P.E., a girl in my class had an attack. Her face was red and she was crying, saying that she couldn’t breathe. We all crowded around her, and my teacher told us to step back and give her air. Another student ran inside to get her inhaler. After a few hits of her medicine, the girl calmed down and began to breathe normally. That’s when I began to understand that asthma was more than just breathing from a device before going outside for recess.

In Fresno, bad-air days were so common that I feel I’ve always known the term. Those were the days when outdoor physical activity was discouraged by the Environmental Protection Agency. It meant cancelled sports practices, indoor games in place of recess, and inhalers ready at hand. When I was in high school, I’d regularly drive past the Baz Allergy, Asthma & Sinus Center, where on the building wall was an electronic sign that reported the daily air quality. Percentages of pollen or mildew would vary. But the reading for air quality never did: it was always “unhealthy”–except when it was “very unhealthy.” I used to wonder what point there was in having daily updates that never changed.

When I was 17 and a junior in high school, I came down with a bad cough that lingered for weeks after the rest of my cold symptoms were gone. My mom, slightly worried, took me to the doctor. During my appointment I had to blow on a hollow, straw-like device with a small bead inside and hash marks for measurement on the outside. My breath was only strong enough to get the bead to the halfway mark. That was when my doctor told me that I, too, had developed asthma. She said it was probably the result of living with the bad air in Fresno. I got a prescription for an object that I was very familiar with: an inhaler. I was now one more person among the 157,000 with asthma in Fresno County.

Fresno is in a valley, and smog and pollution get trapped inside. Geography is only part of the problem, though. Growing up, I never learned much about the Fresno air. I knew that it was bad, but I didn’t know why. I certainly never learned about things that could be done to improve it. And I never learned how to protect myself from it.

I hope that changes for kids today. I accepted my asthma diagnosis without much agonizing, because so many of my friends had the same problem. Having asthma in Fresno is normal. But it shouldn’t be.

Lauren Alejo is a literary journalism student at the University of California, Irvine and an intern at Zócalo Public Square.

*Photo courtesy of sarahalex4.

The post Hello, Asthma, My Old Friend appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The moment I stepped inside the Hill’s Brothers Lock & Safe shop in Garden Grove, memories of my childhood fantasy came rushing back to me.

I can pinpoint the source of my fascination with keys to one of my favorite childhood novels, The Secret Garden. There was something so magical and special about the key to the garden, as if it did not just guard the entrance between two physical spaces, the garden and the manor, but rather between what was real and what was imagined. I remember how I wished I could find a beautiful old key to some secret space, just like the one in my novel: a key to lead me though an entryway to a place that was not entirely real, a place only I had access to.

As with most childhood dreams it was forgotten over time. That is, until I was faced with the mundane task of buying a new garage door opener. Some of the most fascinating places we find are the ones we discover by accident.

Inside the locksmith’s shop, rows of locks and keys are layered across the wall like sedimentary rock. The oldest ones cover the top half of the wall, and the most recent additions dangle from their spaces across the bottom half. Literally every square inch of the shop contains at least one key. I venture inside, the garage door opener now far from my mind.

The key to the back office of the shop is located inside a drawer, hidden in plain sight. Loose tumblers and pins, old keys, blank keys, tools, and lock picks cover the entire bottom of the drawer. Anthony Hill, locksmith, rummages around and picks out a single, insignificant-looking key. No markings or key chains are attached to signify its purpose. He holds it in his palm and motions for me to follow him. “Let me show you my office.”

Anthony’s office is not an office. It is a museum of keys displayed somewhat forlornly on shelves behind glass cases. The keys were collected by George Hill, the shop’s original owner and Anthony’s uncle. Most of the collection has been moved to the Orange County Lock Museum in Placenta, but enough remains to fill the back office from floor to ceiling.

Flecks of dust float around the room, shimmering in the shafts of light that shine through the smudged windows. It smells old in here, like a basement or attic that has not been visited for years. There are keys everywhere. Some are hanging behind tall glass display cases; others are stacked on shelves. The larger items are arranged on the floor. A small display case on the wall–about the size of a picture frame–exhibits an assortment of small, delicate padlocks. A time lock from an old bank vault lies on the ground, its clock frozen at 9:17. Skeleton keys that have been separated from their locks dangle from a large metal key ring.

Anthony meanders through the displays. Every once in a while he stops to tell me the stories of the keys and locks. He points to a large cross-section display of the inside of a Yale lock and explains that Yale invented the classic pin-and-tumbler lock, much like the one you or I have on our front doors.

He points to an odd-looking brass frame on the wall, an original casting mold for skeleton keys that’s one of the last of its kind. “A rarity,” his father–also in the locksmith business–said of the mold when Anthony was a little boy.

The only item that looks out of place here is a slab of wood engraved with Chinese characters, located smack dab in the center of the room–a large, wooden monument among hundreds of tiny, metal objects. It belonged to his grandparents, he explains to me. “It’s what’s mine.”

Each of these tiny, mechanical trinkets symbolizes our universal impulse to safeguard what we value most, and what we want to keep from robbers and criminals and more commonly, each other. Those who hold the keys hold the power because they have access to the things we wish to keep separate, secret, or safe from the rest of the world.

As we exit the office Anthony inserts the key into the lock once more. I can hear the tiny mechanisms turning and clicking inside the lock. I imagine the notches of the key pushing the pins and springs down and the tumbler turning, every compartment in perfect harmony with one another. The door locks.

Lauren Alejo is a literary journalism student at the University of California, Irvine and an intern at Patch.com.

*Photo courtesy of Hill’s Brothers Lock & Safe.

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