Just recently some old high school friends started up a discussion on Facebook to put together for our 15 year reunion. Coincidentally enough, I saw this article pop up: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/15/15757708/hometown-stay-leave Which I found pretty interesting. I don't know if I fully agree with all of their conclusions, but I found it an interesting read. One thing I noticed that they didn't touch upon was the "Big Fish in a Small Pond" effect. There are a number of people I knew in high school that, while a big deal (or relatively big deal anyway) in their teen years, discovered they weren't all that important out in the big wide world and then retreated back to the small pond. Certainly not the case for everyone, but there are definitely a few prominent examples off of the top of my head. Focus: How many of you wound up staying/moving back to your hometown? Would those of you who have moved ever considered moving back? Any interesting examples of people you know who stayed or moved away and then came back? Alt-Focus: I think it's been the requisite year or so since we've had a thread shit talking reunions, so I figured we could do that again easily enough.
Wow is that article dripping with smug. Anyway, I left home at 18 and havent lived there since, not even during the summer in college. I hated living in Connecticut so I left at the first opportunity. I moved to New York then to Boston and I plan on permanently planting a flag up here very shortly. I have zero interest in moving back to CT. The high taxes, terrible cities, poor job industry, and many other similar factors are not very enticing. The town I grew up in was pretty rural, so there wasn't much to do. When i was growing up, there were a lot of kids there. Now the town is growing old and is full of people my parent's age or older. When I run into people from high school that stayed, they seem... strange. They just kind of look at you with this sense of bewilderment and have let the town get in their heads. Fuck that. Reunions are dumb and I knew exactly what mine was going to be like so I didnt bother. People reassembling their old cliques and not talking to anyone else. From what I hear, thats exactly how it went.
Focus: I will never move back to my hometown of Ann Arbor, MI. I left after I graduated high school and I haven't really looked back. Thankfully I won't have to worry about a good job being there in the future as Michigan is a dying state, especially in the eastern half that includes Ann Arbor and Detroit Metro. Now that I've lived in a variety of other areas, I kind of have a hard time understanding people who live in the same place their whole lives. My mindset is different, apparently I'm bit of a nomad moving from place to place. I have a few colleagues in my Masters program who plan on living their entire lives in Minnesota and thats cool, but living in rural Minnesota for a lifetime seems so boring. But I guess people get comfortable. I didn't go to my reunion. I've moved on. I don't care to rehash what happened a decade or more ago. And maybe seeing some of the people who didn't move on or change much from high school would be somewhat depressing.
Focus: Sometimes I think about returning to my hometown (pop. 9410); hell the house I have the most memories of is actually on the market right now. But it's really just a fleeting thought since - like most small towns - the job opportunities are pretty limited. That and I have more opportunities to indulge in my personal hobbies in a large city. Really I just miss the house. How so? I thought it was pretty decent, except for the bit about school selectivity as the conclusions they drew were suspect.
I've never left my hometown. Still stuck in Plainsville, Borington. The east and west ends of our country kicks ass, Ontario doesn't, so of course I'm here.
I never really left my hometown. I left for a couple years to go to university, came back and worked in the summer. Then I decided I would hate doing that for a living came back and started working. My home town has a population of about 12k. The nearest town with over 15k population is 715km away and has a population of 75k. And if you want a city(1M pop) add another 800km. I live in a little ocean side community, and I don't think I could ever live in a place that isn't right beside the ocean. Basically both sets of our parents live here, so it is great for the kids. Both me and the wife have really great jobs that we would not find anywhere else. So I don't think we will ever leave. There are some downside, main one is that the distance for a major city, 16hour drive or expensive flights, so I don't get to go to concerts or any comedy shows without some major fucking expenses. The other is the weather here sucks sometimes in the summer.
I left home for college at 18 and had to return at 23 for a couple of years after a failed stint at law school. It was a shitty feeling, yet I pulled a lot of ass living at home. It was weird. As soon as I finished X-ray school, I immediately moved to Houston. I hated living in south Florida and have no real interest in moving back. Unless a high paying job relocated me there. I knew my opportunities for career growth were out here. Life out here has been pretty rewarding and the diversity is awesome. I've been home a bunch visiting my folks and any time I run into someone from back in the day, it's always weird. Not because of how long it's been but because the disparity between our life situations couldn't be more different. A lot of them got tied down in some dead end job or relationship or they still wait tables or some shit. I firmly believe that unless you have some family business or whatever to walk right into, moving away is one of the best ways to test your armor and seek out the best opportunities to have the best life.
I go home to see my parents. That's it. I don't ever want to live there. I don't fit in. I don't want to fit in. I'm good with that. I hate that my family stays there. It's truly small town Texas. Lots of baptist churches, vacation bible schools, lots of confederate flags and racism. Chunky highlights and sparkle butt jeans and on and on and on. no thank you.
That article was really quite shocking. Someone was paid in actual dollars to write it, I assume? FOCUS I left. I have considered the thought of moving back but couldn't do it for a number of reasons. I grew up in a small town in Central Maine. The town as I remember it died about 10 years ago, there are no reasonable paying jobs or industries anymore. I used to say that I wanted to go back there to raise a family but that has changed. There is rampant prescription drug abuse and it is a perfect fit for Rusty Cohle's quote: "This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading." I still go home once a year or so because my family is still there but I get so depressed when I go around the town. I don't know what percentage of my hometown left but it was high. It seemed like while I was in college a lot of people left for a few years and came back, then just stayed. A lot of the kids who left came back, got married to each other and instantaneously become townies. I run into them from time to time when I am visiting and we may as well be from different planets. ALT FOCUS My 20th reunion is a little over a year away. I am still of two minds as to whether or not I want to go to it or not. It is really quite a large inconvenience to travel from Florida to Maine for an event like this to see people who if I really wanted to see or talk to I would have done so in the last 20 years and not waited until now. Though it is Maine in the summer and it is beautiful up there at that time of the year and my family is there, I may still decide to go.
Focus: I left and was very ready/glad to leave, but I'm also always happy to return. I grew up in the Hudson Valley and my dad's still living in the same house, which is an hour and a half bus or train ride away. It's basically like having a country house, and since I'll be getting it one day it'll then actually be having a country house. I highly doubt I'd ever move back year-round, but I'm planning on keeping it as a second home. I visit around 3-5 times a year and it's nice to get a break from the city, see my dad and the couple people I know who are still in the area, and hang out in a cool town or in the woods/mountains. Most kids end up leaving, but I think the majority of people have a soft spot for our hometown and like visiting. The people I know who left and moved back all did it for good reasons. Most were teachers who wanted to come back and teach in our school system because it's great, a couple people opened up restaurants, a couple people are nurses and one does something in local government. Alt focus: My ten year reunion is later this year and I'm actually looking forward to it. Reunions are probably not as interesting in the age of social media, but our class wasn't all that cliquey or dramatic so there's a lot of people I wasn't exactly friends with enough to keep in touch with but got along with enough that I'd be interested in hanging out again for a bit. It's not the type of place where everyone's going to be confused why I'm not married with a couple kids by now or that I'll have to spend the whole time hearing about other people's kids. People are actually doing interesting things with their lives that I'd genuinely want to learn more about so, I don't know, it seems fun. Plus a lot of people got super hot, so I'm interested in that.
Focus: I went to college in Philly, about an hour south of my hometown. It was nice to get away, but also nice to be close to home if I needed anything. Looking back, moving away was definitely something I needed to do to grow as a person. After school, I moved back with my parents until I got my own place outside of Philly. I lived there until I got married, and both our families are from the same hometown, so we moved back to start a family. I'd say it's about split 50/50 with kids from high school staying in the area and moving away. The thing I hate about living here is the people aren't as friendly and I run the risk of seeing someone I know every place I go. Sometimes I want to run into Wegmans in my pjs and be left alone. But we couldn't justify spending $100k more for a smaller house with less property. Also, being close to family means the little perks like my mom cooking us dinner so I don't have to, and using the grandparents as free daycare! Alt Focus: I think reunions are falling by the wayside. Anyone who wants to keep in touch does so via social media, so there's really no need to fake your way through a reunion finding out what everyone is up to just to compare yourself. My high school graduating class was 160 kids and I could probably tell you what 80% of them are up to just by browsing facebook instead of paying for a cash bar and shitty food at some random hotel.
I graduated from college in 2009, so naturally I did the moving back in with my parents thing. The only times that I haven't lived in Atlanta were during my two years at FSU and 2.5 years at UGA. And based on what I've seen on Facebook, the vast majority of the people who I went to high school with are still in Atlanta. A lot of it may have to do with the HOPE scholarship encouraging so many Georgia students to stay in state for college. Many of the kids from my high school who did go out of state to school ended up settling in or near the city of the college that they ended up going to. Most of the ones who moved away were the smarter, more successful ones who are now living in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Denver, or New York. And then there are the few really Bohemian kids who I went to high school with who ended up in those cities and I have no idea how they are possibly getting by. I would be out of Atlanta in a heartbeat. I would love to check out any of those cities that I listed above (except New York, which is the only one that I have been to and is somewhere I don't think that I would want to live). Other cities that I might want to live in are Nashville, Raleigh, or Asheville, but I don't want to move anywhere unless I have a job lined up first--and that hope is pretty much dead.
Jesus, that article... Focus: I stayed. Moved a mile down the road from where I grew up and have a pretty good life. I have friends who moved away that tell me how much better things are out there in the world. I'm sure theres other places I could go and I'd be happy for the most part, God knows theres a lot about this state I can't stand. But to me this is home. Alt focus: It's been 25 years since graduation, and I've never gone to a reunion. The majority of the people I graduated with I didn't have much in common with then, I'm certain there's even less now. Even some of the ones I did hang out with then I haven't seen since 92, and are practically strangers now too I guess.
I guess I moved back to my hometown. I went to high school in a suburb, and when I moved back to the area I moved into the city. I definitely don't hang out in the same areas as I did when I was a kid, and I run into people from high school once in a blue moon. So it feels like I'm technically 25 minutes away from my folks, but it feels like a completely different place. I briefly considered going to a mini-reunion a few months ago. The only issue was that it was the same night as my weekly water aerobics class. So, that tells you how interested I was. This is probably how it would have been: a bunch of strangers and some cliques talking about stuff that happened 20 years ago and quickly running out of steam.
My 10 year reunion is today. My hometown is an hour and a half away and the reunion is a loosely organized BYOB picnic where there will be classmates' kids running around the whole time. Nah, I'm gardening and helping a buddy with a woodworking project later. This. I'm already in touch with my former classmates that I'm still friends with. I don't want to bother with awkward conversations and people pretending that they suddenly like me now. People who didn't leave are in the same cliques and I can easily say that moving away was one of the best decisions of my life and I'm not looking back. There's lots of small-minded assholes in my high school class of 300 (it's an overgrown farm town, not tiny but still rural) that I just don't want to associate myself with. The only reasons I go back to my hometown now are to see my parents and go hunting in the area. There are some good friends that I still have in town and I like inviting them over when I'm there to catch up and drink my dad's beer, which I'd much rather do than go to the reunion. In hindsight I guess that may mean I'm just hanging out with my old clique of friends too but at least I've gone out and tried to befriend more people than just those I've known since elementary school.