When I’m in a city and someone asks me where I’m from, I always say “Oh, a small town called Nelson.” And they comment on how they could never survive living in such a small place. But in reality I don’t live in Nelson. I live 15 minutes outside of it. From your point of view this probably doesn’t seem that bad. Most people who live outside of a town live quite close by right? Beautiful scenery, animals, less noise, and clean air. This is what everyone expects when they move out of an established town and into the middle of nowhere. But little do they know…living there is about the opposite of all these things.
First off, they all say the same damn thing: “We’re going to live just outside of town. It will be quiet and peaceful, without all the noisy traffic, but we’ll still be able to drive into town if we need anything.” Well let me tell you, you won’t drive into town when ever you need something. You might do it once or twice right after you move there, but then, you develop your hatred of using up precious gas. It might be like that if you were, say, retired. You’re decrepitly old and don’t care if you spend your days screaming at kids to get off your lawn. That is, if there were kids on your lawn…but there isn’t because you live in the middle of nowhere. You’re perfectly fine doing old person things and driving into town as slow as possible to get denture cream and prunes. For a family of four however, life does not run in this mannerism. Sure, it’s pretty nice when I look out the window, and being woken up by birds at five every morning is just the best thing since sliced bread, but when you run out of toothpaste…life becomes living hell. The “going into town whenever we need to” thing? Yah…it doesn’t happen. Let’s use the toothpaste situation. Brianne runs out of toothpaste on a Thursday, hence she can no longer brush her teeth. But can we drive ten minutes into town to buy more toothpaste for her teeth don’t rot and fall out of her mouth? Oh god forbid we do that! No, we tell her “we can get more when we go to town”. This is on a Saturday. Today is a Thursday. Have you ever felt the fuzz that develops over the course of three days? You could make a new habitat for all the animals within a ten mile radius of my house in there…
That’s another thing that bothers me. Nature is constantly pushing itself down my throat. All the dam deer and birds…I’ve had it up to HERE with birds! “Oh, look at me, I’m a bird. I’m so small and cute and wonderful!” Tweet Tweet NO! I’m woken up at five every morning. All my deck furniture is covered in bird crap. Ever had a psychotic robin small into your window twenty thousand times? It’s like Chinese water torture with ‘Tweet Tweet THUMP’ sounds. Bears piss me off too. They roam about the neighbourhood like they own the place, just eating people willy nilly. Can I walk five minutes to my friend’s house? No, I’ll be eaten alive. I have to ask one of my parents to drive me. My parents aren’t large fans of driving, in case you hadn’t gotten that from the not driving into town thing….So my choice is either to be eaten by a hungry bear, or ask my mother for a ride, which she is sometimes far too busy to give. So I learn to live with bears.
So you’ve been forced to face the bear and start walking. The weather in the middle of nowhere is wild and uncontrollable… and finds great joy in finding innocent children to let out their rage on. To start things off, my neighbourhood is basically a hill. And if you’ve ever climbed in a blizzard…you know what I’m talking about. Now, weather must just hate me. In the winter, it snows feebly almost all the time. No blizzards, no nothing. The kind of snow couples in gushy movies kiss romantically in. But when I’m walking up the hill, does it do this? No, oh course not. How silly of me to possible imagine my weather not being bi-polar. When I go up the hill, it blizzards. And I mean the kind of blizzards that make polar bears say “Man, it’s snowing really hard out.” It snows and snows and snows. I swear it’s laughing at me, trudging up the hill while my limbs fall off one by one from frostbite. And its not just the falling snow. It’s the fact that it creates piles so high Superman, who leaps tall building in a single bound, would just sit down and cry when told to go over one. Because of course, we can’t plough the damn road, no no. We have to make sure the teenagers of today’s generation get enough exercise by dragging themselves up miniature glaciers everyday. How thoughtful of them, don’t you agree?
In between the blooming ecosystem in my mouth, death plots towards the avian species, and wishing Tom Cruise would come escort me up the hill so blizzards would leave me alone, I somehow manage not to crack and have a mental breakdown. So when people from the city tell you they couldn’t survive living where you live, agree with them whole heartedly. Because a city kid could never live through all of this. Kind of makes you feel awesome…In fact, I’m going to go wrestle one of those bears right now!
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