I can remember feeling infinite and invincible. I keep saying that I feel old, but I do. Feel old. I'm not even 24 but I often look back and remember feeling naïve. Feeling infinite. Feeling invincible.

I can remember being 15 and driving from northern Kentucky into Cincinnati by myself at night to go to Buzz. Buzz Coffee and CD-o-Rama was a coffeehouse that should exist in Broad Ripple but doesn't. Buzz defined for me what coffeehouses are, should be, staying open till 2 and 3 a.m. during the week. The bottom floor was littered with used couches, springs popping out, old lawn furniture, mismatched tables and lamps. The top floor housed a new and used CD shop run by a 60-something reformed punk rocker who seemed to have been at nearly every important music event that had occurred during the last 30-some years. Student art trying too hard to be avant-garde hung on the wall. A constant haze of smoke hung at the ceiling (ah, the days before Cincinnati was nonsmoking). Buzz boasted $5 milkshakes just like in Pulp Fiction, sold bottled Frapuccinos for $10 as a gag. Dillinger Four played there. Rumor has it the Pixies played there. A month after its closing, the Get Up Kids filmed the video for "The One You Want" inside Buzz. I loved Buzz.

But there were also several friends of mine who'd gotten mugged entering the coffee establishment. Another friend was shot in the stomach a block up from Buzz while defending his girlfriend from getting accosted by a group of men. Cars were broken into so often that it became routine. While I loved Buzz, it was in one of the most unsafe areas of Cincinnati.

But none of this seemed to matter to me when I was 15. Even with the 2001 riots, I still ventured across the Ohio River, assuming that I would be fine. I'd park blocks and blocks away or in unlit alleys and walk by myself, thinking it'd been a shame that my friend had been shot but that my mom was being overprotective in forbidding me to go to Buzz anymore.

I had absolutely no common sense at 15. Really. And this invincible feeling, this feeling that nothing bad could or would ever happen to me, continued for a few years, even upon entering college. Luckily for me, nothing ever happened, thank god. I was never mugged, my car was never broken into, no one ever messed with me.

Buzz closed because the owners didn't want any of their customers (who had, over the years, become their good friends) getting hurt anymore. It was sad, but ex-Buzz customers still identify themselves as part of the old school Buzz crowd. Many Buzz kids (who, frankly, are all Buzz adults now) moved up the street to hang out at Highland Coffeehouse. And now, when I go to Cincinnati and hang out at Highland, I refuse to park more than a block away. I walk with my keys between my fingers, ready to swipe at whomever. I have male friends walk me to my car if I leave really late. I think I'm being cautious, and rightfully so, but I miss being a teenager and thinking the world couldn't touch me. That bad things would never happen to me. That I was infinite. Because now? I know bad things happen, that a person can never be too prepared, that maybe parking seven unlit blocks away from the coffeehouse your friends all get mugged at isn't so smart.

But I still miss feeling like that didn't matter. Feeling oblivious to pain or fear. Feeling blissfully invincible.