Do you ever watch a show on tv and someone mentions that they are "from a small town"? It is always surprising to me when someone says that and I look up the "town" and it has a bigger population than the entire county I grew up in. So maybe they are using nearby towns to give reference, but honestly, does it matter to the television watching populace if you say Wapokeneta, OH or Buckland, OH?
A small town is not 60,000 people. A small town isn't even 30,000 people. I grew up in towns with populations of 1,000 to 3,600 people. My hometown only just reached 4,000 residents because the prison moved there a couple years ago and that population counts in the census. The county's population hovers at just below 40,000.
Growing up in such a small town is both good and bad. Everyone knows you, but they also know your family. You have a reputation that precedes you. On the one hand, someone might tell your father they saw you smoking (the one cigarette you'd ever smoked) behind the dumpster at work, but on the other hand, someone might recognize you as kin and give you a $20 tip that same day. More than one speeding ticket (initiated while driving with Massachusetts plates) has been avoided by invoking the family name or simply saying "I was just leaving the farm."
Then there were the teachers. My older cousins were trouble makers, so I had to overcome that. My younger cousins and sister had to overcome academic achievement expectations set by me. One teacher was absolutely dreadful until she connected the dots and realized my grandmother was her maternity nurse when she had her babies. Then I was the teacher's pet.
In a small town, there is no room for anonymity, but no one can get lost, either. It takes a village to raise a child, and often, small towns are more than up for the task.
I'm sure growing up in a city or a suburb is perfectly fine, that just wasn't my experience, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
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