If you're like me and born in a big city, one of the best things you can do is live in a small town for a few years

You will no longer be anonymous.

This is good and bad. Everywhere you go you will have both friends and potential critics. The mayor stands in the same grocery line as everybody else

You can look through a microscope at a little slice of society

Town taxes too high, someone subdivided just outside town and pays low county taxes

Town builds a nice thing and goes into debt - county people use and have no share in the debt. Yin and yang

There aren't as many people, so the people in your life become closer. Family, church, work, slo-pitch, hockey, become your world
I come from a close knit family, and I couldnt believe how tight many of the families were

It can be sort of suffocating and I liked to go to Edmonton and sit in the back of my cousins bar and drink tea where nobody knew me, and watch track

It's a point of pride to be tied to a piece of earth. The '100 year farm' plaques are a big deal, the home quarter is sacred.

My friends farm is based around where his great grandfather literally put down stakes on his way to the Klondike after news came down that there was no more gold!

These lessons have come into contrast for me as I returned to the city. I appreciate the city more for having gone to a small town, and really have noting bad to say about it.

Except that it's ok to smile at people as though they are your neighbour!! Because they are!