(Electronic Swap) Boredom Buster #2

I grew up in dodge/middle of nowhere/out in left field/the back 40/one stop light and any other euphemism for being from a small town. The population was approximately 1,000 while I was growing up. Everyone was related and knew everyone else. No fast food, no movie theater, no Target or department stores, no mall, and no signs of progress. A dry county. Plenty of churches and plenty of gas stations to get back and forth to church. A tractor festival. The personification of 'You might be a redneck if...'. The epitome of a backwards, racist, bigoted, and small-minded town. So yes, I hated where I grew up. The only thing I liked was maintaining a countdown until I turned 18 and left for college. And if anything positive came from it, it taught me about the type of person I never wanted to be. I don't go home unless I have to. I'm embarrassed to tell people where I'm from. The town's reputation precedes it and I don't want people to think I have those values.

I grew up in the same house I came home to after I was born 48 years ago. I cannot imagine living anywhere else. I live with my parents which are both 78 years now. On the 25th of December they were married for 57 years.
What did I like about the place I grew up in? Brakpan is a very quiet place which is close to the one major city, Johannesburg. The neighborhood I grew up in was safe back then and we played in the street until late at night. My primary and high school was close to home so that I could either ride my bicycle or walk to school.
What did I dislike about the place I grew up? Back then there wasn't really anything thing that I disliked. Unfortunately, now we have a very nose neighbor on the left which forever want to tell you what you should do in your house. I kindly reminded her, that she doesn't pay for anything in our house and does not live there and that she should rather be concerned about things in her own yard and house.

I grew up in a small town in the Finnish countryside. One of those towns where pretty much everyone knows pretty much everyone. My friends would know things about me earlier than I knew myself. Because our mothers talked. When I was a teenager I wad desperate to move out to a bigger city. Which I did eventually. I love my little home town, it's surrounded by lakes and forests. What I didn't appreciate as a teenager was that you could always count on people. If you need a builder, you know you will have someone you can trust. Because you probably went to school with them. And you can't mess with people in a small town or you will be out of work. Of course there's still things that bug me even as an adult...you can't go anywhere without having to talk to someone. One summer we were visiting my parents and our youngest got ill. We went to see the local doctor...who is my friend's dad. The nurse was our old neighbour's daughter, and her daughter went to school with me. And the receptionist was my mum's friend. So a quick trip to the doctors turned out as a long chat about what is going on in everyone's lives. My daughter fell asleep on me because it was taking so long :D

My dad was the chef in a mental hospital (yes, today it would be a home for people with learning difficulties), so I lived in a bungalow in the grounds. It was great. We had the whole grounds to play in. I was an only child, so by "we" I mean me and the other children of employees of the hospital who lived there. In the summer holidays we went out around 8am and didn't come home until we were hungry. So long as we stayed in the grounds, no-one worried about us. If we wanted to go off site (there were woods down the road where we liked to play) we just had to tell one set of parents where we were going and report back when we got back. The hospital ran a minibus to the nearest town to pick staff up and we were able to go on this to get to town free of charge.
I honestly can't think of anything I disliked about where I grew up.

I grew up in Dallas, Texas and it was great. When you grow up there, it becomes like a small town, you know so many people. There was always something for us to do as a family or with our friends. We got out of school for the State Fair & free tickets - we had an ice skating arena & live shows - we had many interesting museums - Cowboy Football - we lived in a cul-de-sac, so knew everyone on the block - and most of us attended the same church - I loved visiting my grandparents - all of the family got together for holidays - I just really had a wonderful childhood and many memories.

I grew up in Kuwait until I graduated high school. I liked that I got to experience and actually know the Middle Eastern culture. Food is great there and met good people. I was able to have a pet falcon at one point. I saw camels regularly. Being a foreigner, I had to eat in designated places and couldn't eat in public during Ramadan. I can't really say I had anything I disliked about growing up in Kuwait (which is a blessing!) :)

I grew up out in the country which was probably about 8 miles from the city (which the city is a small one). I loved growing up where I did, we had a lot of kids in our neighborhood and always got together and played ... first I remember when we were really young, we'd play the old time games like "Red light, Green Light", Red Rover and just fun kids games (which by the way, most of the younger people probably never heard of those games but yes, I am THAT old. 😂

We'd ride bikes together, go sled riding together, snowmobiling together and also play baseball and football together as well. We had so much fun!

Growing up, we had a horse named Patchy, a dog name Rusty, a cat named Beauty and also when I was really young, I remember we had some sheep and baby lambs, some chickens and at one point in time we also had 5 calves as well.

When I was a teenager I always had babysitting jobs in the neighborhood and babysat for at least 3 different families. At that time one didn't get rich doing it either - I made a whole 50 cents an hour (and that was for 3 kids!)

In our teens we helped to load hay bales onto the wagon and believe it or not, we actually had fun doing it ... we weren't asked or told to do it but we wanted to.

We lived, I'm thinking it was probably about 6 miles from where we went to school at and when it was really nice weather, we were allowed to ride out bikes to school if we wanted to and a lot of times we did want to. Back then it was much safer to do that than I believe it would be today.

Honestly I can't think of one thing that I didn't like about living where we did. (Oops, I guess I didn't say "where" I grew up, did I?) I almost forgot! I grew up on Route 408 ... the closest city that I referred to is where I live now (which is in Titusville, Pennsylvania) and where we went to school at was on the same road we lived on and that was in a small ... I guess you'd call it a borough and that was in Townville, Pennsylvania.

The house I grew up in is no longer there and though there are a couple of the families of our neighbors I grew up with still living in the neighborhood, most are gone and new people moved in.

It broke my heart when I found out that the house I grew up in was torn down and a modular home has replaced it. Our beautiful weeping willow tree that was in our yard is gone as well as our apple orchard. (We had a whole orchard of apple trees and also a cherry tree, peach tree and a plum tree along with a current bus!)

Not sure if this swap was a good idea after all because writing all of this, I'm starting to feel homesick! (Seriously, I didn't really mean the swap wasn't a good idea because reminiscing can be fun but really, I am feeling a bit homesick too.)

Thanks so much for sharing about where you grew up, it was so interesting to read! 😀

WOW, when I posted this ... I didn't realize that I'd written THAT much. I guess by now you can pretty much guess that yes, I tend to be quite a talker, huh? 😂🤣😂

I grew up in the same town I currently live in. I love the close knit community here, and that everyone comes together to help individuals in need. The Welsh language is widely spoken here too which is nice, I get to communicate in my native language daily. It's very convenient here, as there's multiple schools, shops, cafes, restaurants, surgeries, leisure centres, and a bus station within walking distance from my home. A couple of things that I dislike about my hometown is that word travels fast here, so a lot of people knows you and your family's business. As I live on the coastline in north Wales, UK, it gets very cold here during winter. I definitely prefer when it's warmer, but it's currently -1 degrees Celsius and we have some snow outside :)

On the bright side, I grew up in a small town. I liked that everyone knew everyone. I enjoyed the forest right behind our house and that I could walk everywhere. There was only one snow plow so we had more snow-days from school that surrounding towns. There were only about 300 registered voters so the state and county politicians didn’t bother us. The semi-retired police officer on weekend evenings wouldn’t drive over 35mph so,.. if he tried to stop you, all you had to do was go 40.

On the down side, I grew up in a small town. I disliked that everyone knew what everyone was doing. There were not a lot of other children my own age so I didn’t have a lot of friends. It was hard to get a decent pick-up baseball game going in the summer. As a child, I didn’t know any better but as I grew up, I realized that small town politics was a strange thing indeed. There were only about 300 registered voters so the state and county politicians ignored us. There was only one snow plow so it often took a long time for our street to be plowed after a storm. There was somewhat a lack of police protection as the officer on weekend evenings wouldn’t drive over 35mph.

NOTE: Since the swap is over except for rating your partners, I do want to say something.

I DID NOT REALIZE THAT I HADN'T SET THE PARTNERS WE'D HAVE AND I WAS FULLY EXPECTING IT TO BE "THREE" BUT WHEN I WENT TO RATE, I FOUND THAT IT WAS ONLY ONE AND I AM SORRY, I HAD INTENDED THERE TO BE 3 PARTNERS.

The only reason I can think of that I missed that is that my internet has been in and out for quite awhile but more so in the past 4-5 days and I have to hurry and get done what I want to before it goes out and I can't do anything until it comes back on. (It's very frustrating when you are working on setting up a swap and by the time you're ready to hit the button to set it up and find your internet is out so you lose everything you did while setting it up.) Grrrr!