The big misconception about small towns is that the children raised in them are well-behaved little angels. Anyone who knows me would beg to differ.
Not that many people know me, though. Like I said, I live in one of those small towns. The smallest of the small, actually…. a tiny, ocean-side village called “Mineral Town.”
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My mother hates the city. Passionately. “Nothing there but smog and snobs,” she had told me on a number of occasions. As she cooked dinner, she would tell me of thieves, bank robbers, kidnappers, who lived all the way away in the main hub of the world, where my mother used to live, before she “came to her senses and moved.” Not a day went by where my mother wouldn’t tell me how lucky I was to live in such a "charming" place.
“Charming” is codeword for “boring,” in case you didn’t know.
There wasn’t that much for a five-year-old girl to do in a place like Mineral Town. I lived on a farm, for Pete’s sake. My mother encouraged me to go and play with the dog, Max, or to groom her prized horse, or feed the chickens. But I don’t like animals all that much…at least not as ardently as she does. “The closest thing to a cow you get in the city is a slab of beef in the corner meat market,” she claimed as she carried a sloshing bucket of milk to the refrigerator in our small farmhouse.
It wasn’t like I could go to my father’s work, either. He was a blacksmith’s apprentice (the master blacksmith being my great-grandfather, my dad’s granddad), and Saibara discouraged my presence. He alleged that it was because he didn’t want me to get hurt in the workplace, but I always got the feeling that he just didn’t like kids.
The only other children in the entire town were six years older than me. In adult years, that’s not a very big difference. But in kid years, it’s a lifetime. Besides, May and Stu were much more interested in sneaking off and making googly-eyes at each other than having to babysit a five-year-old tagalong.
So I make my own fun. You would do the same, if you were stuck in your parent’s dream, not being able to make your own.
