Living on "the Rock"

When I walk into the post office and the postal worker knows me by name and asks about my relations by name, I have to smile. I can pick up my parent's mail with no I.D. or hand-written note. They know who we are and to whom we belong.

When I go to the bank the teller greets me by name, comments how tall my children have grown and hands me a note through the window about some firewood she needs from my husband. I feel smug in my surroundings.

The lady at the grocery store asks after my garden, lets me know about upcoming specials on things she knows that I buy or tells me about her grandchildren.

It's all part of small-town life and it's something I appreciate. It's nice to be known, trusted, and to feel at home. I truly like that.

However...

There is a flip side to all this familiarity, and I'm not talking about the local gossip network, which we all know about.

(For example, the rumor that started at the Strawberry Festival this year that some famous Who's Who was going to buy a rather expensive parcel on the Island...that rumor zoomed around the Island faster than a hydroplane at 5 a.m. on the Fourth of July. The next week the local paper had an entire article on why the rumor was a rumor even though several well-known locals had begun selling it as fact. Indeed, the rumor had been posted on Wikipedia as fact in less than a week's time. Only on an Island....)

Though gossip is one flip side of familiarity, there is yet another, well, flippier side to it all: the introvert's need for anonymity. Sometimes it's nice to go where everybody knows your name, (as the famous lyric goes) and sometimes, well, it's just nice to go where no one does.

I have days when I just want to be left unnoticed. Days when I'd rather be surrounded by 1,000 people I didn't know on a New York subway than live on an Island. I'm sure I would feel more isolated manuvering through Manhattan anonomously.

Thursday was such a day. Thursday I was in no mood for a grocery aisle encounter or a check-out chat. I wanted to go into the store and out again without so much as a friendly grin. Tell me I'm not alone in wanting to be!

The truth be told, miraculously I made it. I went in during "rush" hour at 6 pm and somehow managed (with careful plotting) to dodge in, grab my much needed contact lense solution, run through the introvert-friendly computerized self-check out machine and back to my car in under 3 minutes. Alone in my victory I drove away.

Maybe small towns aren't the best places to live for true introverts. But then again, "sometimes it's nice to go where everybody knows your name...." sigh. Island living.