Life In A Small Town
I live in a town that looks like it came from a Norman Rockwell painting.
Living in a small New England town does have some advantages when it comes to raising children. My children can ride their bikes to town without me and go buy gum or candy at the Corner Store. They can go to the post office and pick up our mail.
If we have packages the postal worker will help the child put them into their backpack. When the child forgets the keys in the post office, I'll get a call to let me know. And I'll tell them to hang onto them until the next day, because no one is going to take them and rob our house. And actually no one even locks their doors around here, so keys or actually "breaking" in anything wouldn't be warranted anyway.
The children can go to the library, where the children's librarian knows them all by name and remembers them from when they babies. The town is home to the summer art/music school of a college. There are free concerts on the green all summer long and free art lessons for adults and children.
It sounds so nice. It really is a great place to live. I should really like it.
But why do I find it so stifling?
The gossip and everyone knowing your business, sometimes before you yourself even know it, annoys me. The sameness of all the people living here in town, or at least them all trying to be the same. I just don't fit in here, but I am not sure where I would fit in either. LOL
I guess wherever you chose to live there are pros and cons. Right now we are at the time in our lives where we are raising children, and so it is "perfect" place to live in that regard.
I try to ignore the cattiness, but this past week has really gotten to me. I didn't even want to sign the children up for soccer this fall since I knew we would be the gossip du jour.
It has gotten me thinking... are there any perfect places to live? Is there a place to live that has all the things I like about this town, but with nice people, people who are respectful of others life choices? Or are people just gossips everywhere? And nicer weather wouldn't be bad either.
Living in a small New England town does have some advantages when it comes to raising children. My children can ride their bikes to town without me and go buy gum or candy at the Corner Store. They can go to the post office and pick up our mail.
If we have packages the postal worker will help the child put them into their backpack. When the child forgets the keys in the post office, I'll get a call to let me know. And I'll tell them to hang onto them until the next day, because no one is going to take them and rob our house. And actually no one even locks their doors around here, so keys or actually "breaking" in anything wouldn't be warranted anyway.
The children can go to the library, where the children's librarian knows them all by name and remembers them from when they babies. The town is home to the summer art/music school of a college. There are free concerts on the green all summer long and free art lessons for adults and children.
It sounds so nice. It really is a great place to live. I should really like it.
But why do I find it so stifling?
The gossip and everyone knowing your business, sometimes before you yourself even know it, annoys me. The sameness of all the people living here in town, or at least them all trying to be the same. I just don't fit in here, but I am not sure where I would fit in either. LOL
I guess wherever you chose to live there are pros and cons. Right now we are at the time in our lives where we are raising children, and so it is "perfect" place to live in that regard.
I try to ignore the cattiness, but this past week has really gotten to me. I didn't even want to sign the children up for soccer this fall since I knew we would be the gossip du jour.
It has gotten me thinking... are there any perfect places to live? Is there a place to live that has all the things I like about this town, but with nice people, people who are respectful of others life choices? Or are people just gossips everywhere? And nicer weather wouldn't be bad either.
3 Comments:
I live in small town, too, in the midwest, and also have a large family (#7 due in November) and I know exactly what you mean. It's beautiful and quaint, but the people are very homogenous and I know we are talked about. The comment I kept getting this time was, "I heard you were expecting!" I bet they did, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall for some of those conversations. Not really, since I'm too thin skinned! LOL
I also live an historic home that needs a lot of work!
Oh yeah, I'm with you. I love some things but also know people look at me and shake their head and talk about how "weird" I am. I also know when I lived in cities people in the work place were like a little town and gossiped too so maybe it's just people. Someday hopefully one of the kids will move somewhere really cool and I can annoy them by moving close.
Hello green house flower lover. I like your post and hope you do more. I will check back later. Please come and check out my blog at Greenhouse Resource .
See you soon!
Dan
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