Small town "experts"

Click and Clack really are great, so unpretentious and natural. They can't be copied - nobody could do quite what they do as well as they do.

I recently came back from a six-year small-town experience. It was a weird feeling for me, since I grew up in a city. It felt like living permanently in a summer camp; you kept seeing the same people day after day, in the grocery store or on the street or in your bank or doctor's office. It felt to me like a group of people got together and said, "Let's play pretend. You be the doctor and I'll be the grocer, and he will be the banker, and she will be a school teacher." Everybody has parts in the play. But it keeps going on the same way year after year! The small-town "experts" are regarded as "real" experts; "Dwight" knows all there is to know about gardening, so the local wisdom goes, but he really knows so little, compared to a lot of others "out there".

I found that many people were very skilled in shutting out the outside world. Maybe it's just laziness, or maybe the smallness of the small-town world is cozy. I think that narcissistic wish to be seen as "the expert" is active in this.

A lot of people felt their town to be the best place in the world to live, but I found the whole experience unsettling, as if I were placed into a world of pretend. I feel much better in a big world, where I have a balance of connection and anonymity, and I don't feel the need to be (or pretend to be) the best at anything.