Small town vs City kids

I've often been complimented on my kids.  This makes me really proud.  People ask how I've raised emotionally stable, happy kids who are so polite and well-mannered.  I answer them because I've brought them up as small town kids.  I did this by getting to know most of my neighbours and local merchants.  Paid a lot of attention to what they are doing and resorting to parental guerilla warfare.  It's tiring but it's so worth it. 

When I was seventeen and living in a small town, I hated it.   I was constantly teased for having green hair, having old ladies, "Tsk" because I wasn't wearing a slip under my six layers of taffeta Madonna skirt. I was called a slut because I liked to party or being called mental because because I loved the theatrical and at one point wanted to be Ethel Merman.    I couldn't wait to get to the city with the theatre, the lights, the shopping.  Almost every other kid I knew couldn't wait either.  We thought people who brought their kids to the country to raise, outside of the city limits were insane.   I couldn't wait to get out and when I did, I loved every minute of the city.  Well sort of.  Yes I ended up living on the streets and yes I did have life threatening moments but believe me, I can find trouble anywhere. 

I now know exactly why they did it and if I had been able to, I would have brought my kids up in a small town.  Not farm or rural and not the kind of town where you end up marrying your cousin, but the kind of town with a five figured population.  Why?  It's safer and it's easier and if you are related to half the town even better!

You see there is a huge difference in the upbringing of children in City vs Town.

First lets talk teen boys and safety.

I remember when Breyan came home with a gage in his ear.  He didn't do this until he was 18 because Dad threatened to rip it out if he did and I threatened I would go get one of those magnetic cranes from the construction site down the street.

  In the city there seems to be this unwritten urban rule that you have to look and act tough to be safe.  You don't make eye contact, you wear subdued colours so you don't draw attention to yourself.  As a teen boy in the city, you be as scary as you can to those around you so they don't mug you. Most city boys nowadays do this by piercing obvious parts of their bodies, tongues, eyebrows, noses etc.... they are a walking artists canvas.  They walk and wear clothes that in their way are supposed to tell people they may a 12 gauge hiding in their pant leg.  (That's how you get the Cripp walk.  It's that walk that boys do that makes them look spastic.  It's supposed to infer that they have a heavy weapon strapped to their leg.)

This has become such an ordinary fashion statement in the cities that I don't even notice it anymore and if I do I just wonder when they are they going to pull up their pants?

In a small town if you get a guy with 80 piercings and 25 tattoos, you know he's a freak.  You know that if he should show up on your front doorstep, you need to lock the doors and find the 12 gauge.
I'm not saying guys in small towns don't get piercings or tattoos, it's just that they are more reasonable about it.  On average a small town guy will be wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, a baseball cap and his weapon of choice is a baseball bat. 

In a small town you worry if the boy your daughter is dating is driving a truck, getting drunk and bashing mailboxes as they drive by.

In the city you worry if the boys have a sedan, are on drugs or are shooting people out the back window.

This is all the city's fault.  Because though you would think that a small town would make people feel claustrophobic what with the gossip, knowing each other's business, few places to go where no one knows you.  When you get labelled it takes forever to outgrow it.  This is true.  Small town kids have a great deal of pressure to make friends because there just isn't that many people to be friends with.  They have to guard their reputation because thirty years after you get labelled as "the kid who peed his pants in second grade," you will walk down the street and somebody will yell, "Hey Peepants, How are you?"

In a city though, there are so many people that you feel isolated in the largest crowd.  You are overwhelmed of choices for making friends but yet the kids are trained to keep themselves safe and therefore are afraid to make any overtures.  It is because of the anonymity that pedophiles and muggers feel bolder.  They know that being described as male, 6' 4" can apply to ninety other guys around them.  So we tell our kids, "Don't talk to strangers, don't accept anything from anybody, keep your head down..."  By the time they are six we create a paranoiac bubble around them.  Its' a sad thing that we have to do this.

Teen girls

This is the reason why you usually have two types of teen girls in the city.  The Prosti-tots  and the Gangsta-Girlz.

It wasn't just because the boys wore their hair long that I had trouble defining whether my kids friends were He's or She's.  It was because I often couldn't tell if the kid with the huge pants, the black sweatshirt, the tats and gages was a girl!  I have met girls in the city that scare the crap out of me.  They have a cold stare that says, "Ya, what's your problem lady?  I'd kill you in a heartbeat." 
It's not their fault.  When you spend a lifetime of family, friends and society trying to prepare you to protect yourself from rapists, pedophiles, pimps, you are going to react to that fear by protecting yourelf best as you knows how.  When a city girl looks around her peer group and see it's the gangsta' guys who are perceived as the tough ones, she will emulate them. 

As a teen in a small town I was terrified of the farm girls.  I'm not talking your Octoberfest blonde milkmaid farmgirl.  I'm talking a real life farm girl. A girl who's father proposed to his wife because a wife who can lift a pig under one arm and hold up the tractor while you change a wheel is a definite asset on a farm.  The kind of women who do get marriage proposals for their cooking skills because when you are a farmer and you work from morning to night, you deserve a hearty meal and as my granddad used to say, Everything else about a woman goes downhill after she gets married but the cooking only gets better.

There was this one group of farmgirls that made my life living hell.  They were often wearing overalls or jeans with wellies and when they didn't like you, look out.  They would corner you in the bathroom and intimidate you.  They would intimidate World Judo-Wrestling champs.  They were scary.


The other side of the coin for city girls is the Prosti-Tot.  This is the six year old wearing a miniskirt, a tube top, 80's hair and more jewelry than a gypsy telling fortunes.  These girls have chosen another way to stay safe.  They get men to do it.  They figure the best way to do this is to use the time honoured sex kitten look.  They are surrounded by media that tells them that sex sells.  They may not understand what they are doing but think of it this way.

A town girl will get media in the form of movies, TV, magazines and the Internet.  Most of these have limited access to your towngirl.  There just isn't enough outlets in a small town to seep a girl in this nonsense.  But a city girl who takes public transit to school is basically riding in mobile ad campaign.  There are ads inside and outside the bus.  There are billboards everywhere.  Since sitting outside on the front porch is not considered safe, she spends more time inside the house or clubs open to the media brainwashing.  Since there is so much competition around you, you feel you can have an edge in the dating game by being sexy.

You know how they say to show your infant flashcards or to play classical music to your infant as they can absorb knowledge even before they are born?  Well for a city girl, A is Apple Computers, G is for Gucci and M is a golden arch.  You can't protect them from all of it because that is just what city advertisers have to do to compete on such a large scale.  Therefore how can you blame a girl for accepting that this information is correct?  You can't.  You can just educate her, show her a good example and pray.

In a small town if some guy pulls the car over and offers you a ride there is a good chance you are related to him.  I know this doesn't make it safe to get in the car but Mum and Dad have identified most of the freaks so there is a better chance it's a safe thing to do.  If Goddess forbid it isn't, pedophiles know that almost every father in town is a member of the Rod and Gun Club and they understand that a bullet can reach you faster than a cop can.  Or in reality maybe a baseball bat.

In the city taking a ride with a guy who pulls over is a Deathwish. 

In a small town you don't have to do everything today.  The pace is slower.  You get groups of kids playing D & D because there isn't anything better to do.  Yes your Mum worries because you spend more time online and are not "socializing" but really Mum, with the new chat programs on game systems, you are probably talking to more of your friends than the amount of people she's seen all week, Dad is not grousing about you being on the phone all night and you probably don't have a car to gallivant all over and the public bus doesn't come by your front door.

In the city you become anaesthetised by the time you are seven.  You are surrounded by noise, cars, music, other people 24/7 from before birth.  You begin to tune everything out.  A citykid has to or they will go insane.  So you shut down your senses and by the time you are a teen you have a ceramic shell.  To have fun in the city takes loud club music, drugs, the thrill of danger.  The result is burned out 12 year olds. I see these burnt out kids all the time. 

I blame city parents for this.  The idea is to put your kids into a rigorous schedule of afterschool programs. Dance, Music, Gymnastics, second languages type of things to keep them busy.  I've actually seen five year olds with daytimers to keep their schedules straight.  Mom's have to schedule playdates.  No wonder these kids are 14 going on 40.  It's no wonder half the school populations are on Ritalin.  These parents will tell you they are doing it to give their kids a better chance in life.  They use words like networking and future career prospects.  He's six, his networking should be conducted with a towel around his neck, not a tie.  Give your kids a chance to veg or you will be doing your networking in the prescription line at the drug store. 

It's a proven fact that humans need downtime.  Time to relax and taking all these courses may be fun for the little guy but you know how you always feel you need a vacation when you come home from vacation?  Give them a vacation.  Make good choices for tv viewing, use the parental control on the computer and if they just want to sit on their butt on Saturday morning let them.  These parents make life so intense for their kids that by the time they are twelve they have attention span of gnats because you haven't structured their thoughts for them. 


It takes a village.

In the city, the citykids look over their shoulder for the cops when they do something they know is wrong.  Thanks to the cop shows, they know that most cops would rather avoid the paperwork than arrest you if you're doing a misdemeanour.

A town kid will think twice because HE knows that old lady Carmicheal is looking through the net curtains and will call his mother, his grandmother and the cops.  The small town kid knows that the cops are paying attention because that cop is probably his Uncle Mike.  It's really simple; small towns are filled with busybody snitches and everyone knows this.  Therefore, lower crime rate, your child is less likely to end being known as "person or persons wanted for questioning in last nights incident." 

To conclude, if I had my way, every kid in Canada would grow up in a small town.  Large enough to support two movie theatres and the requisite Pizza Hut and McDonalds.  Their idea of "clubbing" would be a bush party with the speakers on the back of the truck and a bonfire.  They would be hailed as "Peepants" thirty years later and the biggest gang war they will ever witness is their aunts at a wedding, tippled to the gills taunting their enemies with battle cries that include, "We know what you said about our Doris, Clarice.  Don't think I've forgotten and Mother did want me to have the second best China you thief!"

You will have to make their life better by driving to the city for the Arts or shopping but there are some pretty good local Amateur groups in small cities.  You will have to make an effort to protect your Charlie from "that freaky girl with the green hair."  Your hubby may have to have some strong words with "that boys" father but you will have happy, healthy, mentally balanced kids and that's the goal right?

Kimberley

PS:  Hubby's idea for a safe living environment for kids is to move to a shack in the deep woods with no electricity and possibly barbed wire to keep the demented squirrels out of the garden.