Candybear,

LOL, the term “small town” seems to vary apparently! I grew up in a small town, about 500-700 full time residents! When I graduated from High School, there were 80 students in K-12. EVERYONE knew EVERYONE. And if you were a new resident, you learned that we were all related either through birth or marriage.

After graduation, I moved immediately, could not WAIT to get out, and I was never coming back. My husband (from the neighboring small town about 1000 residents) was in the Navy and we lived literally around the world.

When our eldest started school we were in a city (imo) of 16,000 people. It looked very similar to the place I grew up, but the demographics were a lot different. There were gangs and crime that I just was not accustom to.

We also discovered my son was learning disabled. He was in an elementary school with thousands of other students, the school really didn’t care if he got the help he needed. Furthermore, they asked if his federally funded teacher’s aid could grade papers and such when he was in art class, PE, and recess. Of course! I replied. Turns out, they used the money for his aid to pay for an existing aid, that never even met my child. He was NOT getting the help our tax dollars were paying for.

We had a 6 foot privacy fence and my children were still unable to play outside unless my husband and I were right there, watching every second. As a final straw, we lived two blocks from the elementary school. There was a drive by shooting and a two-year old was injured. I had had enough! We moved back to that little town that I grew up in.

My daughter was too bright to stay home from school another year. Her birthday was a month and a half after the cut off date. The school was willing to test her to see if she was emotionally and academically ready to start school, something larger cities and towns are unwilling to do. She was, and ended up graduating shortly after her 17th birthday.

We now live in a small town, about 1000 people, about 45 minutes north of Green Bay. It has all the advantages of a small town, but Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Chicago are all within a few hours drive. So we have the advantages of both. The noise, crime, and congestion of the city just isn’t worth it to me.

Someone earlier mentioned a pharmacy, how nice is it to call your pharmacist 5 minutes before they close and tell them that you just broke your insulin bottle, and need a new one to hear “hey, you’re on my way home, I’ll drop it off, do you need needles or testing strips too?”

Hillary Clinton once said “It takes a village to raise a child.” The advantages of a small town are that if my kids are doing something they’re not supposed to, they KNOW I’ll find out about it before they even get home.