My Obscenely Small Town

Every time  I come home to Troy, NY – I dread leaving the house. The area I was raised in is fairly nice: it’s near the Adirondacks, plenty of parks, the arts scene is picking up… However, I have no desire to run into someone I graduated high school with whenever I want to buy groceries.

I turned a corner into the produce section of our local monstrous Price Chopper Supermarket and was assaulted by someone I apparently should have remembered. His face was vaguely familiar and he insisted we had an art class together, but I couldn’t remember this guys name. Do I really have to remember the names of everyone I sort-of kind-of but-not-really knew five years ago? I legitimately felt guilty for a moment; but then he refused to tell me his name, shook his head as if to say “shame on you” and walked away.

I spent a good deal of yesterday downtown, hiding in Market Block Books. I started and finished Sherman Alexie’s YA novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian“. It took two hours and it felt really good to blow through a book (even if it was YA). Alexie always gets a thumbs up from me.

It is somehow jarring to me to spend so much time in the place I was raised: the public library where I spent many summers, the bars my father used to drink excessively in, 70% of my graduating class hanging around (they’re EVERYWHERE), the familiar faces of local crazies – forever embedded in my brain… They say you can always go home.  Right, well while Troy may be my hometown,  it has long lost its spot as “home” in my heart.