Small Town Girl

I have never considered myself a small town girl.

I was born in Baltimore. That's real city, with millions of people.

We moved to just outside Washington, DC when I was little. That's again, a real city. There are people everywhere--in fact, although DC itself isn't very big, that's the best way to describe where we lived, since nobody's ever heard of Cheverly, MD.

When I was 6, or maybe 7, we moved to a suburb of Boulder, CO. Shortly after that, we moved to a suburb of Denver. There are millions of people in the Denver Metro Area--more than the whole state of New Mexico, I believe.

And then in high school I landed in Podunk. A town of 18,000. The nearest city doesn't even have a million people in it. I think the whole state has under 3 million. And I prided myself on being from a city. I hate the outdoors--I'd rather be inside a mall. I don't find nature relaxing; I find it dirty. I don't get joy at standing on top of a mountain; I get more joy yelling at the stupid drivers in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic (and I have actually driven in Baltimore and Denver and multiple other cities in such traffic, since we know NM will never see the likes of that!).

I always dreamed of returning to a big city to live. Well, I wanted to be in the suburbs, not the city proper. That is, until we went to Albuquerque yesterday for a doctor appointment, and had to experience the joys of parking garages with no parking and parking lots with no empty spaces. I couldn't believe how many people there were in all the spots. We ended up parking against the wall in the parking garage, so close that I got to climb over the center console and out the driver side. We figured since other vehicles were doing the same, perhaps we'd catch the tow truck on one of the other cars and could escape before we got towed.

And now I don't think I want to live in a place where there's no parking. And I'm afraid that maybe I'm destined to be a small town girl, and the city girl part of me has moved on.

I suppose I should be grateful that I don't know of a place here where parking has to be validated, so I guess nowhere in NM can't be THAT big.