OP/ED: On small-town angst: The good, the bad and the shopping
By Christine Esovoloff
All of the celebrations surrounding SunFest recently have me thinking about small-town dynamics. I am definitely a small-town girl through and through. I love the community support, the sense of safety, and being able to walk down the main drag and wave at a dozen people I know as they drive by. Don’t get me wrong, I have my moments of yearning for the big city.
Particularly the shoe shopping, the fantastic restaurants, and the plethora of night life activities.
But I chose to raise my kids in a small town because I love it here. There is something magical about having a bear look through your patio window at you while you’re eating breakfast or being able to drive five minutes to a fabulous hike alongside a sparkling river or lake.
Yes, small towns are wonderful, but let’s face it, small town life isn’t all lollipops and roses … it has its downsides, too.
My biggest beef with small towns is the gossip.
Holy moly, the gossip!
It is really something to be standing in line at the grocery store, fully enthralled with a juicy story the clerk is telling you, only to eventually realize that the story was about you or your family!
Yes, this has really happened to me, and yes, it was embarrassing.
To be fair, I didn’t realize right away, it took me until I was in the car driving home to notice. I was throwing the car into reverse chuckling about the sordid details of the story when it clicked. Gee, that’s almost like last week-end when me and the girls were………Wait a minute….What the?!?!…Holy crap, she was talking about us! (sigh)
Beef Number Two ties right in to the first; you can’t get away with anything in a small town.
This is a good thing when you have rascally teenagers upon whom you want to keep tabs, but it is not so good when you just want to have a night of tequila shooters with a couple of girlfriends. There is nothing worse than showing up for work and having your boss make fun of you because his cousin’s girlfriend’s sister knows the bartender at the local pub in which you were (badly and loudly) singing Axel Rose songs.
Whatever. It was only the one time, okay?!
Last but so-definitely-not least, is the mall shopping.
Or should I say lack of mall shopping.
Oh, how I desperately want to go cruise 500 of my favourite stores spanning over a seven-block radius. My little town has lots of shops that I enjoy, with things you can’t find anywhere else, like handmade jewelry at our local art gallery, and shops with locally-made soaps or knitwear. I really enjoy shopping locally and supporting small businesses … but sometimes I like to branch out and stretch my mall feet a little in giant shoe stores or Pier 1.
Shopping online is an okay substitute, but it usually results in me trying on clothes in my living room with my kids gawking at me, only to find out that they don’t fit and having to send them back.
Not as much fun.
Go figure.
Now, despite my small-town complaints, I am still devoted to my little community life. Sure it’s not perfect, but at least I can keep tabs on my kids and raise them in a place where most people know them by name. And for those times when I want to whoop it up with the girls, we can always leave town and go to a place where nobody knows us; where our Axel Rose karaoke is welcomed without judgment, and where we can do a little mega-mall cruising on the way home. Give me that twice a year, and I am one happy small town girl.
