The older I get, the more I appreciate the quiet. Now, in my 26th year, I can honestly say that a low-key afternoon at home reading or cooking with my favorite records blasting in the background is preferable to braving crowds (most of which contain at least one moron who will inevitably annoy me) at the movie theater or at the mall more than 98 percent of the time. I like morning walks, sitting perfectly still in parks with a book and a snack, and I find I now have a hard time staying up past 1 AM.
I am an old fart. And I am totally okay with this.
Which means that while I’ve spent the majority of my life believing I would live and die in the beloved city I call home, I now can’t help but entertain the possibility (the very, very likely possibility) of moving to a smaller, slower sort of town – particularly, the town T and I are currently calling home for the next week and half of our writing retreat.
I like that this is quite possibly the only town left in the entire state whose Rite Aid has not been eaten up by a Walgreen’s. I like that when strangers say hello as they pass you on the street, it has nothing to do with potential rape. I like that it seems like I’ve been sucked into a time continuum vortex and am actually living in the ’50s. I like that there are American flags everywhere in the middle of June.
I like that I can leave the back door open to air out the house and the only intruder I have to worry about is a wayward moth and not some deranged Charles Manson copycat killer (though I still get paranoid about this from time to time – it’s only reasonable). And I LOVE that there is a used bookstore downtown that has two long, gargantuan sets of shelves dedicated solely to Westerns, and could possibly be housing many more hidden treasures. Chief among them, this gem I found yesterday:
I also love that the store operates according to this almost Utopian concept of returning a book for a certain amount of monetary credit that can be applied to your next purchase. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s owned by the sweetest elderly man, either.
In short: I think I’ve found the town I want to spend the rest of my quiet, old fart days in.
– Jayne
Lady Bromance 