you all know the lyrics, "just a small town girl, living in a lonely world." well, leave it to journey to make me think of my first topic.
i know there are advantages to raising a child in a small town, no worries of heavy crime, not to mention the communtiy feeling that surrounds you. however, i know as a person who has spent nearly all of her life in a small town in michigan, that it can have its disadvantages as well.
first of all, small towns tend to have small town values...which often lead to small town closed mindedness. my friends and i usually feel judged and often hated for our opinions and lifestyle choices. for example, a very close friend of mine; who happens to be the most honest and responsible person i know, also happens to be a homosexual. this may be finally gaining acceptance in the outside world, but within the confines of a small town, unfortunatly this is still viewed as a sin and perversion of how people should live their lives. following suit, fellow classmates find it completely fine to scratch inappropriate names into the front of his locker. i'm not claiming that all people in all small towns are not accepting, but when i visited chicago over summer break i witnessed something i never had before.
i was walking down michigan ave. (in chicago there is a michigan ave, don't get confused.) and as i was waiting for the walk across signal i noticed a same sex couple holding hands infront of me. they were behaving so casual, at first it didn't even seem odd to me at all. but after a few moments i realized, i had never in my life ever seen a gay couple holding hands in public before. at that moment i realized the strong difference that existed between small towns and cities.
in a small town, you must constantly be aware of your surroundings. who's there. what are they doing. what you are doing. because if someone noticesyou doing something they don't like? before you know it the news will be spreading like wild fire and all you'll have left are ashes. but in a city? in a city, everyone is too busy living their own lives the way they want to. in a big city you don't need to live your life for anyone elses acceptance, you can truly just live for who you are and who you want to be.
i'm not trying to knock down the small town life, i will always be appreciative for the person i've become and the friendships i've made here. however, i can tell you as soon as i'm 18? i'm making it out to the city to be who i want to be.
growing up in a small town.
By jmearmstrng - Posted on May 14th, 2008
Tagged: Personal freedom
And don't forget, small towns are being overrun by city people. Some of which bring their city problems with them. It's what I'm seeing in my town. We may have no stores or entertainment in the area, but we've got gang activity, drug problems, and all the other city problems. It didn't used to be like these a few years ago.
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Mind Control is Easier Than You Think
i have noticed some of that only just recently, and our town now not only has the disadvantage of not having experiance with excepting new ways...but also the inexperiance with having to deal with these problems. i know my high school is scrambling to control not only the gang and drug culture comming into our school, but the racist and curious reactions to these people from the existing student body.
just a side note commenting on your "no stores" in your town. my town just got a tim hortons, and theres is about a half hour wait in to-go line. it's absolutely crazy.
We've got a Dollar General. That's about it.
Yeah, small town schools are definitely not prepared for the onrush of a different culture and lifestyle. I only hope that things can level out and back off before it all gets worse.
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Mind Control is Easier Than You Think
My town has a little general store, post office, village office, bar, library, and biker club on one block. Still within the town, we have a tractor dealer and an elementary school.
We also have three churches and an annual rodeo hosted by *gasp* the Catholics. Who are a bunch of snobby whites who don't like to admit that the Asian kid is more Asian than white, and that there are "wetbacks" living in the village. Ooo, ooo, there's three families of us! Ah hah!
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my town was about the same untill about 2 years ago, when all of a sudden a mcdonalds, movie theatre, and a bowling alley popped out of the ground.
speaking of additions.
we recently just introduced an exchange student program and i didn't know how that would go over....suprisingly only two kids were idiots enough to make fun of this poor quiet korean girl and the rest were just curious.
It would be good to get some different perspectives and skin colors in your school! and it would be equally useful (and perhaps more so) to get some of your classmates out of the country. That is a mind-opening experience! Hopefully they will come back with an enlightened worldview to share with their classmates!
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
The small town I grew up in was full of crime. I moved there from a suburb, and my first day of 5th grade someone asked me if I wanted to get high on lunch. I had no clue, and was made fun of for not smoking weed. People could get away with vandalism, theft, and violence because there was not an adequate law enforcement system. The education sucked because there were only a few underpaid teachers, and there were no options for AP, etc.
F*** Religion. Read more here:
http://www.progressiveu.org/020528-f-religion
well i am writing i suppose....from almost a biased point of view? i was referring to my small town and the disadvantages i experianced there, but its always interesting to hear other points. i could never see any kids really getting away with any drugs ect where i live simply because every place is so heavily supervised and kids are almost shoved into clubs, activities, and ap classes. either way i guess small towns give kids a hard time.
I live in a small town (x<350 people), and the majority of the people in said town are at least 40. They complain about the kids in my town because we stay outside after dark - on our own properties. They think that we should have to be inside by 700, light or dark... I'm serious. They blame the "gangs" for any problems - loose dogs, a streetlight that burned out. Do you know who the gangs are? One is this group of kids who are basically harmless skateboarders, another group is kids who do participate in illegal activities within their own homes, and another is myself and my friends. Yeah, I'm part of a gang. There's four of us - we race around my yard and my neighbor's yard on our off-roaders, and basically make noise. Sometimes we're out until 1100... And we've actually been called a menace. I thought it was funny.
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that i can actually relate to, because we also have a rediculous curfew of 9:00 pm for 16 year olds or younger. its at the awkward stage where about half of my friends are 17 and half are 16. we are just now exoeriancing the "nightlife" ie, 11:00 pm, and have been known to be yelled at by cops for little acts of "loitering" or "disturbing the peace".
i'm not going to defend or attack the small town life, but i will say it can deffinatly be a pain.
Ten and under are 700, without older supervision (even on private property).
Eleven and twelve have 800-830 (depending on which cop is on duty).
Thirteen and fourteen have the curfew of 1000.
Fifteen and sixteen have midnight, and seventeen technically has no curfew, but the cops tend to "advise" that you be on your own property by 1030/1100.
Well, people try to implement stricter curfews for us and then wonder why younger adults (20-29) with their little kids aren't moving here. Geez, maybe if they stop trying to pretend that the elementary school uptown is for looks and out-of-towners only, they'd have more houses sold! It's a safe, quiet town, but very hostile to the under-21 crowd.
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regarding 'closedmindedness'
There is a saying:
One should not be so openminded that their brain falls out.
Being 'open minded' is not always a virtue, especially not when it leads to justifying great evil.
i do agree, and am not trying to excuse any of these said evils, but i will never find it acceptable to discriminate against race or sexuality, which many people in my town have made a sad habbit of.
I think that you'll find that everyone discriminates.
It just depends on which groups they discriminate against.
Nature of the world. Result of Sin.
i do find that, and even in myself. once again however, there are some discriminations that are socially acceptable such as ones against;
smokers, addicts, cheaters, and liars.
where as some are not even a choice and should not be even thought of as an option to discriminate against.
Well, there is something to be said about discriminating against that which is impure or bad. Defending the innocent from the jaws of the corrupt is a virtue.
Just be careful when judging those from your town. Your perceptions may be different from what is actually going on.
I've found that to be the case for me as I got a bit older. (not that I'm VERY old, I'm 28, but you get my point I hope)
i do, i do.
i know from experiance of seeing situations from the inside and outside how different things can be from how they seem.
thankyou :]
No worries. I have a bit of a curse in that I was raised by folks MUCH older than myself, and I never really fit in with my generation.
AS such, I spent much of my life watching others.... learning how people function socially.
One notices patterns in everything when they do that.
There is no originality. Nothing New Under The Sun.
i've come to see that in relapses of trends.
it's almost kind of saddening in the fact that i now think...what is there left to do?
Oh, it isn't just trends. It is everything.
Ever wonder why you can pick out the 'emo' kids? Or the Goth Kids, or the Jocks?
They're all the same.
Even nonconformists conform with one another. (Everyone conforms, it just depends upon which circle they conform to)
Reactions are predictable, thought processes are predictable, actions are predictable.
And, given old saying such as "There's nothing new under the sun" and "The more things change, the more they stay the same." it means that it has ALWAYS been like this.
While the form may morph over time, the predictability of people doesn't change.
it is pretty much a the same but adds onto it
a mind is like a parachute, it only works when open, but if it is too open it is like a garbage bin, all sorts of people can throw all sorts of rubbish into it.
Yours truly,
.demosthenes
hah you're full of the sayings eh? keep them comming, i find them interesting.
thank you for the input!
read the blog and thought up one of my own. it will be up soon, check it out.
Yours truly,
.demosthenes B-)
thanks :]
i certainly will.
Don't you hate it when people try to be closed minded? Reality is not always going to be peachy perfect like everyone likes it. Eithier get used to it or be dumb about it.
gah yes i do.
and i would rather have people be oblivious than have to hear and see their pathetic attempts at rejecting reality.