on hometowns

Society has made it virtually impossible to exist in a public setting without being occupied with some electronic device / book / other human / miscellaneous object without being labeled as a lonely, antisocial, friendless, pathetic excuse for a person. And if you beg to differ, go walk into Starbucks or your coffee venue of choice, order what you will and sit in a chair. Don't bring anything with you, don't sit with anyone, don't act like you are in the middle of doing something, just finished doing something, or are about to start something. Just sit--let your cells respire, let your eyes wander, and take note of the fact that your tongue cannot find a comfortable position in your mouth. You probably feel compelled to do something, because at this point, you probably feel pretty awkward. And if you don't, you're probably making other people around you feel awkward. Just take a look at how weird doing nothing really is.

I find myself not wanting to fall into this trap when I decide to go to the campus center and I realize I need to bring something, if I was not already going there to work. I'll literally just bring my Greek textbook and open it to a random page so people think I'm doing something, when in reality I just felt like sitting down to drink some hot beverage. But if people catch your eyes wandering and you don't actually appear to be engaged in any sort of studying, they'll probably realize that you brought your Greek textbook just so people think you're studying fervently like a normal person and not staring off into the distance.

The no-fail, look-at-me-I'm-normal prop is a laptop. In this age when no one actually writes anything down anymore, it's perfectly acceptable in almost all occasions--except when you are at a petting zoo or a wedding rehearsal dinner or a fourth grade band concert--to be using your computer.

And since I was extra proactive today and was ready to go to class about 45 minutes before scheduled class start time, I couldn't just pull out the Greek textbook and sit in the coffee shop like a mindless slug. So I brought my computer to give off the vibe of extreme preoccupation, like I was in the middle of something vastly important and academic.

It was something more along the lines of: seeing if there was anything else on Twitter besides the melancholic tweets of Romney supporters wallowing in despair and the seemingly infinite tweets celebrating the president's reelection, scrolling passively and monotonously through the Facebook newsfeed, reading articles about 56 ways you can interpret a text from a guy and how easy it is to incorporate your summer clothing into your winter wardrobe on various college blogs, checking Facebook again in hopes that something happened (it didn't), pinning impossibly difficult but gorgeous hairstyles onto my ballroom board on Pinterest, considering blogging, and reading some more blogs. 

Something good did in fact come out of this monotony. Sometimes when you read something and it speaks to you it's just too exciting not to share. I was scrolling through stories on Thought Catalog when I stumbled upon this gem. And as to not bore you with things you would know by reading the piece, I'll just assume you care enough to read it. 

What I loved about it so much was that I found myself thinking about multiple cities as I read different parts of it. I've lived in different places and I become attached to them quickly, so quickly in fact that even after visiting a place for only a few weeks I adopt it as my own. One of my favorite opening song lyrics is from Dido in "Life For Rent": I haven't ever really found a place that I call home / I never stick around quite long enough to make it" because I haven't; answering the "So where are you from?" question always follows this sort of pattern: "Well, I was born here, but I live here, but for me I consider A, B, and C to be my hometowns. I still like where I live, but it's not home, it's just where I dwell."

To clarify, I was born down the street from Harvard Square, and I have to admit I feel just a tad bit proud of that even though I had negative control over that situation. I lived in various towns outside of Boston before moving to an actual suburb at least 30 minutes from the city. This is my childhood home, where I frolicked in the sprinklers as a happy-go-lucky child and ate watermelon on the steps with the neighborhood kids and played in the snow for days on end (I actually don't like frolicking in sprinklers because the grass gets wet and sticks to your feet and it's just not a pleasant feeling, and I don't even like watermelon. But the snow is true). But I had a fantastic childhood. All my friends were literally about 20 feet away from me at all times. No one had homework that would greatly impact playtime, which dominated my life. There were no worries, I hadn't a care in the world about anything but having fun and doing whatever I wanted. It was magically blissful.

Then I moved a thousand miles away from home to Georgia when I was 11. For the first two years I was praying we would move back; the idea that my parents could uproot us in such a wonderful time in my life was devastating, and I didn't want to accept it. But I grew to love living there, and the people I met and the experiences I had were wonderful and if I could go back I would have changed nothing. 

And now I'm living in the town my mother grew up in, a thousand miles away from where my permanent address is located, re-experiencing the city that I had been going to for years since I was born. 

But when I read this story on Thought Catalog, especially this:

"...you could write volume after volume about this place. You know every nook and cranny, every shortcut, every coffee shop. You cannot drive down a road without it invoking some memory, a feeling, the vague recollection of an old song you used to sing, or a smell or a taste that is still almost tangible."

The only town I could think of was my dad's hometown. 

Which means nothing to you.

That is the place where I feel the most at home. It's where I feel the most sense of familiarity, of family, of memories, of love. It's a tiny little would-be island with a population of about 3000--I say "would-be" since the only thing connecting it to the world is this small two-lane causeway off a rotary. 

I've been coming here since before I was born. It's essence lived inside of me before I took my first breath. I know the town like the back of my hand and each summer I try to find new bike routes to get to different places. I know the most beautiful places in the town. I know the cracks in the sidewalk. I know when the best time to see the squid is, and when the beach gets busy. I know that Forty Steps does not in fact have 40 steps, but I'd rather have it that way. I know where they filmed Shutter Island, because I remember my nana telling me that she was unsuccessful in trying to see the filming while walking her dog by the site. I know where to find the Peanuts comic book collections from the 1950s in the library, and which playgrounds have the best swings. I know the histories of the oldest houses, and I imagine myself growing old in one of them.

To some it's a monotonous, quiet town with nothing to do, but all I can see is the endless, yet-to-be-discovered (by most) beauty. Its idiosyncrasies are like the lumpy parts of the quilt that were not woven perfectly, but that's why we remember them.

And what makes this place different from the rest of the places I have lived in is that when I thought about what I would do on the last day of my life, if I knew it was the last day of my life, I know exactly what I would do.

I'd spend it eating pizza on the dock and dancing to Frank Sinatra from a record player.