When we moved from Toronto to a smaller town, my first culture shock occurred in a grocery store. I was standing in the checkout line when the clerk started chatting. I stammered and stuttered and made the obligatory remarks about the weather, and then retreated quickly out of there, keeping my eye on this strange woman, lest she follow me and beg to be my new friend.
The next time I went shopping, it happened again. Only this time, the woman behind me started talking to me, too. I soon realized that this is normal behaviour for small towns. People talk to each other. They don’t immediately see you as a threat. What a revelation.
In all my years growing up in Toronto, I never had a clerk talk to me, outside of the typical “did you find everything you were looking for” question, mumbled in the tone of voice in which one might say, “my hemorrhoids are killing me.” In large cities, your best defence is to avoid all contact with strangers, because you never know who the psychos are. It’s an interesting exercise to stand in a packed subway and try hard to avoid absolutely all eye contact. Glance around, and everybody’s looking at the ceiling, reading the ads as if the cure for cancer is hidden in them in code, or studying a newspaper, even though you cannot change the page because you’re packed in there like sardines.
A while back, I was shopping with a friend when a frantic woman came up behind us, asked us to watch her half-filled cart, and proceeded to shop for another five minutes, throwing in detergent and toilet paper and frozen pizzas as if a hurricane were around the corner and we had to stock up. She was employing the “I have to protect my place in line at all costs” defensive manoeuvre, which I had witnessed many times, and even perfected in my early twenties. My friend was livid, not being familiar with this particular behaviour. It is never seen in small towns. But I smiled, and once this mad shopper finally deigned to return to the line, I asked her when she had moved from the big city. She looked at me in surprise and said, “last week.” She then proceeded to stare hard at the magazine rack in order to avoid all further eye contact.
I don’t know what it is about smaller towns that makes people so much more relaxed, but I think it’s partly because there’s more of a feeling that we’re rooted here together. Chances are your cousin knows his second cousin, or your neighbour once dated his sister in high-school. There’s a connection in there somewhere if you just stop to find it, which is, of course, the primary topic of small town conversations, as if we’re all playing our own version of six degrees of separation. All of this leads to a much slower pace in life. When your main goal is to get where you’re going without being harassed or meeting some weird loser, you go everywhere quickly. On the other hand, when you see your neighbours as potential allies, likely long-lost relatives, or at least people just like you, there’s not the same compulsion to hurry out of there lest some weirdness rub off.
Of course, some big city hurriedness is genuine, because it does take so darn long to get anywhere in large cities. Traffic’s a mess. Public transit is worse. And walking means dealing with smog or slush or hail. Going anywhere takes a minimum of twenty minutes, with ten of that just waiting for the elevator inside your apartment building.
Twenty minutes from my house will get me anywhere within a 25 km radius. There’s no hassle, there’s no rush, people smile at me, and the stress lifts away. It took a few years, but I can now look almost everybody in the eye. I may no longer be street smart, but I sure do smile a lot more. I think the move was worth it.
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