Today as I was leaving the grocery store, a complete stranger said “Goodbye, (*my name*)!”
I nodded politely, and nicely said goodbye, realizing I had absolutely no clue who this person was. I still don’t know.
One of the drawbacks to living in a tiny town in a mostly rural county is that almost everybody seems to know everybody else.
Some people might find this comforting and cheery; I find it unsettling and creepy.
One thing I relished during my brief stays in larger cities was that absolutely nobody had any clue who I was. I was a wonderfully anonymous face in amongst the equally-nameless hordes.
It was glorious.
Here in my hometown it’s completely different.
A lot of people know “of” me, since my mother was well-known in the community before she retired. I grew up with all kinds of strangers recognizing me and wanting to talk to me because they recognized me as the daughter of someone they knew.
I remember the first time I bought condoms (at the age of 20), in what I thought was a discreet location a few miles away. Within 24 hours, someone in the community had “tattled” on me and my mother knew. I still don’t know who told her.
I learned how to have polite, respectful “small talk” with complete strangers who knew peculiar details about me that I had certainly never told them. It felt creepy as heck, but I did it anyway, because god forbid the news should trickle back to Mom that her daughter was a curiously non-green version of Oscar The Grouch.
Since I was the introverted hermit type, I didn’t see any need to learn people’s maiden names and their relatives’ names and where they lived and who their kids were and when they graduated and where they work and whether they’re lactose intolerant and whether they move to Florida for the winter and what species/age/gender/color their pets/livestock/grandchildren are.
I really enjoy just minding my own business.
But there really ARE people here who know everything about everyone.
Sometimes they’ll try to describe the location of something, and the conversation will go something like this:
Me: So where is the store that has that sale on Rice-A-Roni?
Them: Oh, I forget the name of it, but you know which one I mean. The one on that street that’s close to where Darly Fudgesicle-Dorfman lives. Or at least she used to before her alcoholic daughter moved in and kicked everyone else out. Frieda, I think her name was… or was it Brenda? You know. The one whose cat could flush a toilet and it scared her diabetic boyfriend senseless in the middle of the night because he thought burglars had broken in.
Me: He, uh… he thought burglars would break in to flush the…. Y’know what, never mind, I’ll just go to WalMart.
Them: Oh! If you go there, be sure to say hi to Argyle Beedleminer for me! I hope her goiter surgery went well. You know she’s been hitting the bottle pretty hard since her parakeet ran off with the next-door neighbor’s cockatiel.
Me: I’m walking away now.
9 comments
OMG… that’s so true. I grew up on a small town too, and eventually moved to a city, which is like a mixture between a big city and a small town. Sometimes i feel the need to be polite and make small talk, and other times i feel like just minding my business, but i feel awfully uncomfortable every damn time, because it’s “core beliefs given at youth” vs “introvert nature”… i remember back when i was at that town, i even avoided some places just to be on my own, lol. Being an introvert is so tiring… no one ever discusses that, lol.
One thing I used to do when I needed time alone was go sit in the cemetery.
I’d park near the old stones from the 1800’s, and just enjoy the solitude and silence.
Eventually, it got to where people seemed to cruise around there too.
Pedestrians walking around, cars cruising down the paths.
I couldn’t even be alone sitting with dead people.
LOL.
Sitting by the cemetery? Uh-oh, you’re nosy town neighbors are gonna think you’re a vampire! 😛
LOL! Probably.
I should make it worth their time, and wear a black cape and fangs.
Bonus points if I sloppily eat a raspberry jelly donut beforehand.
Or a guy cruising for sex. Just saying….
*Raises’ his hand*
Oh I did that.
For discreet purchases, one word. Amazon.
Alas, the condom thing happened in 1990, and Amazon wasn’t founded until 1994.
If I ever regain anything approximating a sex life, maybe I’ll give them a try.
😉
The epitome of growing up on a small island. You’ll always run into someone who’s known you, and who know your parents or siblings, 100% of the time.