I've Been To Parties Bigger Than Your Town - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/58/small-towns

I grew up in Las Vegas and I loved it.

Las Vegas is 2+ million people, huge, metropolis of a town. It has everything in there, it has a mix of every culture available, and you can get lost there. You can drive for an hour (on surface streets) and still be in the town, and the town is only getting bigger. North Vegas is growing like crazy, Henderson is practically part of Las Vegas now days, and more people are moving in. I love a huge city. Having all of that at my finger tips whenever I want it, even if I don't want it, is invaluable to me. That's what I want out of a city.

Then I went on my mission.

My first area, Borlange, is, compared to Las Vegas, a tiny town, about 41,000. Then I got moved out into the forest to the absolute tiny town of Karlskoga, that tops the charts at about 27,000 people. It was at that point that I realized that there was no way I could ever live in a truly isolated small town.

27,000 people.

I still shudder at the thought of how small that is. I went to a high school of 4,000 students, and we were only one of the dozens and dozens of high schools in my city. I don't even think that there were 4,000 kids old enough to be in any school from 1st to 12th grade in Karlskoga.

Before I served my mission, I went to EDC 2005.

EDC 2005, was roughly 30,000.

After my mission I went to EDC 2007

In both of those pictures, are just ONE stage of the multiple stages that made up EDC's. But what's depressing about those pictures, especially the second one, is that there are more people in that second picture than there are in the entire city of Karlskroga Sweden.

While in Sweden I realized that I just can't do small towns. Small towns are limited. They have one thing that they do, they have a majority population and there is definitive 'normal' people that are doing good, typical, expected things, and then there is the obvious two people who are the outsiders. If you're not normal, there's no support for you, there's no friends, you're alone. That loneliness, that feeling that no one in your entire city would ever be able to understand you or what you are thinking about, is something I can not live with.

In Karlskoga I found out what it feels like to be one of the only twelve people in the area to believe a specific way. I knew how lonely that felt, how lost you feel, how impossible it is when if you don't get along with one of those people, suddenly you have no one to talk to.

Then there was the utter lack of diversity. I love that I am who I am, but the idea of having an entire city of 27,000 people that are just about the exact same version of one another, is scary to me. I love who I am, but I also need other people around me who live differently, believe differently, live differently, or do anything that I don't consider normal. That opposition is what makes me better, and helps me understand who I am.

This is where my current residence starts to send me up the walls. Pleasant Grove Utah has a population of about 34,000 (again, I've been in parties bigger than this town). Not only is the community small, the town small, but the diversity is small. I realized today that there is not a single take out Thai food restaurant in the area. There's a Panda Express, and then a knock off Panda. I can get a double order of orange chicken on fried rice, but there's no way I can find an order of pad thai, or a healthy gallon sized styrofoam cup full of wonton soup. Everyone here is a copy of each other. Everyone here believes the same thing (or at least says they do). Everyone here is white. It's not by choice people believe and act the way they do, it's because there's no other option, and it kills me.

I am not a small town kid. I can't do it. I go crazy in a small town and run to the very large metropolis of the internet to find enough crazy and opposition to counteract the crazy of what happens in a small town.