Small towns...what the heck?

So my sister goes to a school where there will be 30 people or something in her entire graduating class...the town isn't even big enough to have its own grocery store. Blink...you miss it...that kind of thing...

Well, I went to her volleyball game tonight and when I walked into the gym, I swear the whole place stopped and looked at me...it was so bizarre.

I mean, I don't nearly blend it in the normal world, let alone a small town like this one...but sheesh. I look around and there are just faces staring at me everywhere. Creeped me right out.

I don't know how I grew up to be who I am coming from a place like this LOL...I went to a school one district over that was very similar...Surrounded by 'good 'ole boys'...in a farming community...

Do any of you go back to your hometown, what does it feel like? Do you still feel at home or do you feel you've outgrown it?

I felt like I outgrew it at 12...

 

Haha, damn liberal in a small town

I have always stood out somehow in every place I lived.

Back in Israel I was the smart kid who played lots of chess and hung out with adults when he was 5... Last time I came back to Israel (3 years ago, me thinks)... I saw all of my old friends. Most of them are heroin addicts now.

In Honduras I was the crazy Russian. First Russian 99% of them have ever met. I was also the liberal kid, person into drugs, blah, blah, blah. Last time I went back there (A tad over a year ago) I felt completely out of touch... the people there are nice and all and I do still have a few really good friendships with people there, but the mentality is so different, it has always been radically different from mine, and now the distance is just growing.

In the U.S... well, I'm the crazy foreign kid. Conway, Arkansas... small college town wasn't ready for me... no sir... I took it over by storm!

I outgrow places way too fast, which bores me, which makes me look for diversion in destructive things or makes me leave them. One sunny day I'll be able to live somewhere for over a year without wanting to get out of there.

 

i definately don't feel like i outgrew my hometown. i feel out of place, but thats because all the yuppies have moved in. most of my friends are gone, not too many blue collar type families or any other type of family for that matter is are around. but i don't care - let the yuppies stare and let them talk, let them change the neighborhood ..whatever, they'll never have that type of community and neighborhood feel the way they are making things

 

I keep to myself so I don't notice.

 

I get the same reaction when I go back to my hometown. It was super small and I was definitely way different even in high school. I was the only girl who had short hair and that made everything think I was a lesbian. Morons.

Now I fit in even less.

 

where i grew up is like family breeding grounds...I don't fit in because i am not a kid, and i don't have kids

 

My old town went from cow fields & swamps to McMansions. Delicious, super sized McMansions...

 

I still live in right outside my hometown.. and I like going back and pretty much knowing the names of everyone I bump into.. and if I dont I get introduced right quick... but then again sometimes this town pisses me off with their small minds... when I first started going to church I wasnt well liked I kept getting told I was possessed by the devil.. and well now that Derek and I are getting married Im now the "girl thats sleeping with the perversely older guy.." and Derek is the "cradle robber" but hey we'll deal ... I dont know what Id do without my annoying small town drama I wouldnt have anything to bitch about...

 

I have definitely outgrown my whole town. I have nothing in common with anyone, except for my family. Of course, all of us have the worst case of wanderlust. I'm actually moving in a couple weeks, so that'll be nice.

 

well fortunately the small towns i grew up in were up in the mountains rather then down in the farming valleys. where most of the people who lived there either worked for some sort of utility company or another that had infrastructure to maintain going up over the hill. like my dad worked for the railroad and a lot of everybody else my age worked for pg&e (pacific gas and electric, the power company), the highway maintenance department, and so on, or their folks ran a mom and pop small bussiness in town or one of the even smaller neighboring villages. the rest of the folks in town were retirees and what have you. no real major agribussiness to speak of. a few pear and apple orchards. we did have one cold storage packing shed for them. about the time i left they started making what they called tear sheets when the first started making them. i think now a days those things are sold as a product called fruit rollups!

i mean there was a certain amount of insularity, but tecnology wise, pretty much up with everything the cities had, being infrastructure oriented after all, and infrastructure always = interesting tec. of course this was waay before computers were anything like what ordinary people can have today. but every other kinds of stuff, and it was all pretty cool stuff. i thought anyway.

sure some of us were a little different. but i was far from the only one or most obvious either. my highschool had a graduating class of 80, total. the town itself a population of 1024. but the highschool took in from a considerable surrounding area. some having to ride the bus for two or three hours to get to school and again to get home.

of course i grew up wanting to see more then i had. but working for the railroad my dad had a pass that his whole family could ride the trains free, back when the railroads had to keep running passinger trains themselves. so we always, mostly my dad and i, four of five times a year would go down to the (san francisco) bay area for a day or a weekend. this was all through the 50s and 60s. by the early 70s of course i was out on my own. i'm still a boonies guy at heart. not the way i hear farm people described, but more like up in the real wilderness, where highways and railroads cross the tops of the mountains. i mean, what do i need a whole bunch of other people arround to amuse myself when we've got this here internet and our own little computers to play with and stuff like that? i'd rather go out and watch the deer and porquipines then the damd cars and idiots in them making noise on city streets.

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Sometimes I feel like I've outgrown my whole home country.. Whenever I go back to Finland I just feel so out of place there because everything is pretty much exactly what it has always been and I've changed so much that I just don't fit in anymore, at all. But it's fine, it's too cold for me over there anyway. :tongue:

 

I lived in a small town like that for several years, and honestly, I didn't care for it. I had originally come from a big city that had a bad reputation as being pretty rough, and it was amazing to me how behind the times the small city was.

The school curriculum sucked compared to the bigger city. At my old high school, we had so many different courses you could take it was mind boggling. When I transferred, I couldn't believe how little they had to offer, and as one being more into the arts than the basic "meat and potatoes" courses, I felt like I didn't have a place to really shine.

I fortunately got along with pretty much everybody at the school, except for the few girls that were always threatening to kick my butt, but thankfully, it was always all talk.

But I would never want to move back there.

 

i aggree that small CITIES are unpleasant, the kind of towns that are too big to be really called villages, but still lacking in most or all of the redeaming amenities of large clusterfucks, i mean cities. to me, the're still cities, anything over 10,000 people is.

when i say TOWN, i'm talking about LESS THEN 2000 people AT MOST. and my favorite place i ever lived had the post office in the general store and there were less then 100 post office boxes. ours was number 34!

but i think it must all be a matter of context too.

my little towns were along the main corridor over my sureal nervana mountains in california, between sacatomatoes and reno nevada.

way way different, then any sort of farm towns, even in california's farming valley.

yes there wasn't any manufactured entertainment besides the one movie house and whatever was on televison, but you COULD ALWAYS go for long walks out in the woods with the critters. not something you can very well do in those damd cheek by jowl, automoble worsiping, paved over, 'burbs. even the worst ghetto is less bleak then that crap. were you're lible to get arrested just for walking instead of driving a car.

i mean, there's a whole bunch of totaly different kinds of worlds we're talking about here. not just one thing.

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i've biked through a town that had a population of 4 hahaha

don't know if that was true or not, but thats what the sign said

 

i live in a city..outside of toronto.. it's all pretty much people that commute into tdot for work or what have you
it's a big place, but you know everyone or at least alot of everyone your own age anyways...even in the largest of places, the world really is small
i wouldn't say i fit in or don't fit in..i'm kinda in the middle...there are alot of liberal people here and alot of conservative people as well

its an ok enough plae but there really is nothing for someone my age to do...now that me and my friends are legal we go to bars and such, but there really isn't even that many bars to choose from
throughout high school there was nothing but basements and backyards and copious amounts of libations for the reckless youth we were

everyone thats been to toronto knows that there are all kinds of people...there pretty much still are all kinds of people out here too...mostly whiter is all
i live in whiteby/shitby right next to oshawhitz/the shwa ... haha

 

I grew up in a small town (around 2300) and I actually like small town life more than living in a big city. big cities are too rush rush for me. Im more laid back and mellow.

the only thing I dont like about small towns is really not having much to do.... where I grew up, we had a bowling alley and a movie theatre, though..... and a couple pool halls...

 

Exactly. Here where I live, there are a few bars (where you are bound to run into someone you don't like), a crappy bowling alley, and the movies. I'm not much of a drinker and drunk people just annoy me. You can only bowl so often and movies only entertain for a couple hours :hang: <---it makes me feel like that guy

 

Where I grew up. We had NOTHING and still have nothing for entertainment. No movie theater, no bowling alley. Nothing. We had one red blinking light and a grocery store...at night we'd go hang out at the 24 hr Dennys. Now we dont' even have Dennys. They closed down about two or three months ago...I often wonder what teenagers do in this town now. Oh wait...they do drugs and drink...

We have Cabela's here...but I don't know what teenager would want to go hang out there. It's pretty sad actually.

 

Oh gosh, I think all small towns are pretty much a replica of each other. I remember my sister & her friend got their eyebrow pierced in in the 9th grade, and that exact day the three of us went to a basketball game. We payed the $2 and sat down. Not five minutes later, some stupid teacher came and got us out of our seats and made us leave---for no reason what so ever. I remember the next Monday, I marched my attituderidden behind into the principles office and demanded my $2 back and the principal actually made the teacher say sorry to me. Her excuse? We entered the school through the wrong door---wtf?


Yup, if you aren't a redneck who goes to hs pit keggers everyweek, has a loud exhuast pipes, kills every animal insight, talk about everybody's business but your own, and is f'ed up on meth, I guess you are considered an outsider. Really, it's never been so good to be on the outside.

It's rather a shame because I think the town in beautiful in itself, as a lot of the small towns are.

 

For some reason I always thought you lived moreso to the West of TO... towards Mississauga/Brampton.

But I've never been North of Toronto (besides Yukon Territory and on South, on the West Coast).

I have also never been North of Philly, in the states. Never really had a reason to... all my family lives down South or out West.

Cold weather scares me. Bad.

But, to the annie... you took the words right out of my mouth.