It's hard for me to understand what outsiders think of country folk, but from what I've learned it is pretty stereotypical. If you are moving to a small town, you will quickly learn, and may even be a little overwhelmed, by the amount of attention and support you are given to make you feel welcomed. When I think of my community, I think of family. Living in an "everyone-knows-everyone" town does have some advantages to it. When disaster strikes or a family is in need, everyone in the community helps in whatever way they can. Everyone is just trying to help their neighbors, and being a stranger is just a foreign concept. You wave or say hello to everyone you see at the grocery store, whether you know them or not. Locked cars and house doors isn't a main priority because you can usually trust the people around you. Some may call it "southern hospitality" but I believe that it is just a genuine respect for other people that should be found everywhere.
Being involved in every club, leadership role, and sports team available, I was blessed with an unbelievable amount of support throughout my time in Riverton, and still to this day. I represented my community at many highly competitive track meets my senior year. I began breaking javelin records everywhere I went, and I promise you I couldn't have done it without the big hearted people I had supporting me. Teachers and random community members would send me messages of encouragement, provide me with snack bags for meets, and even wrote me a "Good Luck! We are proud of you" message on our community advertisement board. Even though I'm not even in the community anymore, I still get messages, letters and Facebook comments from random people back home, asking about me and my new life.
Topeka is definitely not the same as Riverton in that way, mainly because the city is so big. I've noticed people take advantage of other people and are quite bitter to people they don't know. Where I'm from, if you have someone's back, you always have someone's back. Several of my city friends are completely shocked by the things I will do for strangers, and amount of effort I put in to people and friendships, but that's just all I know. I get an "everyone-for-themselves" vibe from Topeka and it is honestly kind of disappointing. But at the same time it is nice to focus on myself a little more, definitely creates less anxiety in my life. Overall, small town life is more welcoming, but city life isn't so bad either.
There are lots of pros and cons you can take from being a small towner. Me being from Minneapolis, its much harder to trust anyone with anything, except family. I also believe you can also know a lot of people in a big city like at home. The first time I seen someone have that trust with their car doors not being locked or having their car running and unlocked was when I attended Dakota State University my first two years of college. Even until this day, I can't trust someone that much at all.
ReplyDeleteI'm from a small town too and I can definitely tell the difference between here and there. I do feel more unsafe in the city than I do in my home town and I also do see the difference in how everyone interacts. It makes me miss Bonner Spring, but I do like the added benefit of being able to meet a lot of new people here than there.
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