We’re not in Kansas anymore.

Most of you know that we purchased our first home back in December. And that said home was in a tiny, barely-makes-the-state-map village. AND that meant that we needed to make a move from the city of 92,000 that we had been a part of for three years.

It’s an adjustment in more ways than one.

Both Jon and I have had similar experiences over the last week that have slapped us in the face with small town living.

His involved making a stop at the convenience store before church on Sunday. The boys and I sat in the car waiting for what seemed an incredible amount of time. When he got back to the car, I asked him what took so long.

“Oh, the guy in front of me knew the attendant”, he replied.
“Okay,” I say, significantly less interested now.

“That’s not all,” he continued. “The attendant made a comment to the gentleman about her husband being ill and the woman behind me pipes up, ‘Oh great, what has B done now!’”

Everyone knows everyone. Except us. Great.

My experience was earlier this week while I sat in the middle school parking lot waiting for M to get out of track practice.

About four stalls away from me sits a woman in her car. Suddenly a guy in an SUV pulls up and I hear “How’s it going?”

Then another vehicle pulls up next to the SUV. Suddenly all the drivers are catching up on life and how it’s been for them.

You don’t really see that in the big city. Even at the schools, parents aren’t invested in each other unless they have to be by committee.

I graduated from high school in a town of 6,000 residents. My graduating class was 84 members; you knew everything about everyone. Unless they were an outsider.

I’m feeling like an outsider. Hopefully I won’t still feel this way in 2015 when C goes off to college.

I wonder if it’s too late to go back to Kansas.