Being a long-time suburbanite, I still find it
difficult to answer the question "where do you live". You see, you
can't really give a straight answer when you live in the suburbs. I live in a
fairly big town too, which, for the sake of this post, I will dub J-Town. In
J-Town, we have three different zip codes. Just saying I live in J-Town is not
sufficient for most nosy characters. Oh really, where in J-Town? Oh, you know.
My house is just off of a little cul-de-sac, in between two other houses. If
you went down the road a little ways, there's a delightful little playground. I
also live near some, um... trees. I'm down the road from, y'know, a grocery
store. Oh, there's also an Exxon station. That's probably the closest landmark.
You can't really say where you live near, because it doesn't give a proper
context. Saying "I live twenty minutes from the J-Town Mall" can be
subjective to traffic in the area (which is rather lousy in my neck of the woods),
how sluggish of a driver the individual is, and which direction they may be
driving. The suburbs are generally displaced from everything in the real world,
so you simply cannot clearly answer the "where do you live" question.
I suppose I could answer with my subdivision's name, but this can often be
misleading. My subdivision is called "Riverside Estates"; however,
the nearest river is several miles away, and these houses are hardly estates.
My favorite subdivision name, while I'm on the subject, would have to be one in
South Carolina called "Forest Acres", where the tallest tree in the
area was hardly taller than I was. I guess I will just have to answer this
question the same way I answer so many other questions. "Shut up."
Comments (3)
That was so funny, I was laughing all the way through. The way you described where you live is like my dad giving people directions. Dad:"You know that street by that shop just as you turn round the corner on the bus you can just see it poking out. It's just opposite that shop that sells stuff." Me sometimes mum:"Really? A shop that actually sells stuff is fascinating." And that's pretty much how the conversation goes.
I really hate my flat because you can hear all the traffic and there's roadworks going on just outside the appartment block. For some reason the builders feel it necessary to come at 6 a.m. with their massive noisy trucks and loads of other machines, some of which sound like E.T. I'm not kidding. When I first heard it, I was so creeped out by it, I thought I was going to be "taken" or something. But then I realised that it's probably some kind of cherry-pick. But at 6 a.m. when you've just woken up and still slightly sleepy, it did sound like E.T. was going to get me and fly through the window which doesn't open more than 2 inches because of the safety lock. Still, flying aliens are a worry.
By the way, the stereotype is true. It's always miserable and grey. But at least in the South it was slightly less cold. I really hate my flatmates but I don't want to kill them (at least not with an axe anyway - too messy)
to this question i reply,"with your mama"
People never really ask exactly where I live, just "where do you live" means what state, lol.
But when people want to know I can usually say across from the tank testing site in churchville and they can figure it out easier from there.