I grew up in a town of 385 people. I know that because my father did the census, among many other things. When I left home, the population dropped by one. Then a few other people left, and some came, and now it’s 313. That’s according to Google, which is probably not as accurate as my father was, since he would have personally known every single person in town.
At any rate, growing up in a town of 385 people certainly qualifies me as a Small Town Person or STP, not to be confused with a fuel additive. I have visited some large cities and even some REALLY large cities (New York City, Tokyo), and it has given me the opportunity to study the differences between the STP and the Big City Person, or BCP, not to be confused with the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia.
As you know, STPs smile and say hello to everyone we meet on the street. It’s not because we’re nice people, though we are, it’s just that it would be downright odd to pass the only other person on the block and not say something.
BCPs don’t say hello to everyone on the street. It’s not that they’re unfriendly, though they may be, it’s just that it would be odd to say hello to every single person they pass in a city block, not to mention quite time consuming. So BCPs look straight ahead and walk fast. They’re either always in a hurry or they’re trying to get away from the visiting STPs who keep trying to say hello to them.
STPs visiting a city do find it hard to break the habit of greeting everyone they meet. Fortunately, after a few blocks of it, we grow weary and start to scowl like BCPs. Scowling doesn’t come naturally to us because we never do it back home, not that we don’t want to. It’s just that if we were seen frowning in public, word would soon be all over town. “Dorothy Rosby was sure grumpy about something today.”
Similarly, STPs wave at everyone they pass while they’re driving. It’s not that we’re nice people, though we are, it would just seem peculiar not to acknowledge the only other driver we’ve seen on the road all morning.
BCPs don’t wave at everyone they pass in the car. It’s not that they don’t like people, though they may not. It’s just that they’d risk a repetitive motion injury if they waved at every passing motorist. Not to mention they might be distracted from driving, which is, as you know, somewhat more complicated in large cities. Where I grew up, your chances of hitting livestock were better than your chances of hitting another car.
BCPs have an abundance of shopping available to them, including a lot of specialty shops. In large cities, there are entire stores devoted to selling tape or socks or Legos. Obviously in a town with a population of 313, a store couldn’t possibly survive selling nothing but socks, even if all those 313 people went stocking-footed all the time like I do.
Naturally BCPs have a wider variety of employment options available to them, what with sock store clerk and Lego salesperson. I once saw someone dressed as a giant shrimp and another person dressed as a shark on the same day in Minneapolis. No wonder STPs move to the cities – more opportunity.
More coffee too. BCPs have a lot of places to drink a lot of different kinds of coffee that cost a lot of money. They also have a wider variety of restaurants available serving foods STPs have never heard of. This just happens to my favorite thing about big cities. And when they eat, it’s at “breakfast, lunch or dinner.” I’m not sure BCPs even know what “supper” is.
Those of us from really small towns suffer from a bit of low self-esteem even though our population is not as dense – I mean densely populated. This is not helped by the fact that BCPs often seem to think we are not as clever as they are. Maybe; maybe not. We’re smart enough to know when supper is.
Contact Dorothy Rosby at drosby@rushmore.com or see www.dorothyrosby.com.
