Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Small Town Life For Me!

I love small towns. They are cozy and comfortable. Like your favorite blue jeans, they just fit and feel right. One downfall to small towns however, is that there is a secret society of laundry line gossips that have the ability to ferret out things so well it would put the CIA to shame. As annoying as this is when you are the recipient of falsehoods flying around faster than an F-14 Tomcat or when all your personal business becomes EVERYONES business, one has to remember that it is only because they care that they talk. (That, and that there is nothing better to do.) The rumor mill in a small town is an incredible thing really, you can learn things about yourself that you never knew before. Im pretty certain that all those sweet ol' gossips consider themselves as news anchors. (LOL! Old lady: "This just in! Breaking news from Muriel! It seems sweet little Katie isn't so sweet after all, her daddy just caught her sneaking kisses from that Johnson boy down the road! For the full story Betty Lou will have you covered, tune back in, in 10 minutes! Ethel out!")

Anyway, I digress. I really got to thinking about this yesterday when there was a nasty wreck on the highway and within an hour and a half, people had most of the story pieced together. (Rather accurately, I might add.) The wreck was really bad, people died, others had to be life flighted to other hospitals. The highway was closed to traffic so everyone had to take these skinny backroads, it was just REALLY bad! And by the time I got to town, everyone was talking about it. They already knew who it was, how many had died and pieces of what happened. You could just feel the sobriety of the situation in the air. I remember being in college for the first time and every time I would hear a siren I would walk to the door and see where it was going. My roommates made fun of me a little for that, but where I come from, every siren means that someone you may know is hurt. And if it doesnt directly impact you, it impacts someone you know. You cant get away from it either way. My roommates didnt understand that, coming from bigger cities. I remembered that yesterday when, a few hours after the accident. I was sitting at the local drive-in when I heard a siren. Everyone stopped what they were doing and went to look. It was another ambulance and I know I wasnt the only one that said a quick little prayer for the unknown neighbor inside. I am enough out of the loop that I havent found out who was in the last ambulance, but it doesnt matter. That person is someones loved one, and there is someone in sorrow because of what happened yesterday. Our community will band together and take care of each other because thats what we do. We care about each other, even the strangers. And that is why I could never live in anything but a small town.