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2002-04-23 - 6:24 p.m.
There are certain really nice things about living in a small town. One being that when
you go to the gas station the clerk hands you and envelope with your name on it that
contains the mints you accidentally left there last week. A second good thing about living
in a small town is that it is likely that a county employee will be in the gas station at the
same time as you and will tell you that your water bill is late and scheduled for shut off if
you don’t pay it today. And a third nice thing about living in a small town is the fact that
when you get to the end of your street you can see the police station parking lot and you
can count how many police cars are in the lotand then, based on whether there is one
missing, decide which way to drive to work that morning. You see, I have expired plates
and I don’t feel like getting pulled over and since I have yet to muster enough energy to
get new tags for my car, I avoid cops. So if I see that a police car is missing from the lot I
know the three places they sit so I will go another route to work in order to avoid them.
Pretty clever.
There are several really bad things about living in a small town. One is that there is no
anonymity, it makes me nervous that gas station attendants know my name and save my
mints for me. Second bad thing, the whole town knows when you forgot to pay your
water bill. And third bad thing, when you go to the county office to pay your late water
bill while sucking on your misplaced and recovered mints from the gas station, the police
officer that is sitting behind the desk talking with one of the secretaries asks you casually
as you are leaving, “You are going to get your plates renewed one of these days, right?”
AHHH...small town living.
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