Small Town Girl?

I never thought of my hometown as particularly rural.  Sure, I had friends that lived on farms and raised animals or grew crops.  Sure, I knew people who drove 45 minutes to get to the grocery store.  Sure, the number of guns and diesel trucks nearly outnumbered people. However, I lived in a city.  My school district had two whole high schools. There are two colleges in my hometown and a state university less than an hour away.  It never occurred to me that these things might not have been “proof” that I lived in a big city.  I knew I wasn’t living in New York or LA, but it was still pretty big, right? I didn’t realize how small it really was until I moved away to college.

In hindsight, there were things that happened when I was little that horrify me today. Nothing sinister or violent, of course, but things that are just not okay.  For example:

“Coach, why do you always make me play in the outfield position facing the sun? I don’t like it.” My 10-year-old self rubbed at her eyes, frustrated at how boring the outfield was in elementary softball.  Also, why was the sun always at just the right angle to make the visor on my giant softball hat useless?

Coach got down on one knee, making him only slightly taller than me. “Well, you see, it’s easier for you than the other girls.”

After a moment of confusion, I exercised my razor-sharp wit and responded with, “I don’t get it.”

Coach smiled at me and said simply, “The other girls all need to squint when they face the sun. You’re already naturally squinting.”

As an adult, I look back on that interaction and am outraged.  As a kid I took it in stride and thought smugly to myself, “I am genetically superior,” while trotting out to take my sun-facing outfield position, eyes squinting so much that they were nearly shut.

Now that I have lived in an actual city for the last seven years, I realize that my hometown was much less citified than I thought.  However, it really wasn’t a bad place to grow up.  Despite the ridiculous assumptions and interactions with people, they were generally not saying these things out of malice, but were speaking from a position of ignorance.  One day maybe I’ll want to go back for more than a week at a time, but until that day arrives, I’m going to stay in my adopted city and appreciate that now I can finally blend in.