I’ve been reading a lot of books featuring middle aged women in the midst of unsettling, unhinged, ridiculous, comical, complicated situations. It makes me feel seen, because the rom-com like chaos does not end with your thirties. The world is spectacularly complicated—and sometimes it is so awful that all you can do is screenshot the insane posts in your neighborhood group and send them around to your friends.
For the past week my tiny town’s neighborhood group has been having a positive vibe with lots of shout-outs to helpful people and positive business reviews. (Usually it has more of a "shout-at" vibe.) It made me feel like somehow my community had moved on and left me in this negative space. Like maybe I was the problem? It all made me sad and frankly, I was mourning the lack of negativity. How disappointing to suddenly live amongst well-adjusted people who have better things to do? Where does that leave me?
But then this afternoon, while I was fielding phone calls from the nursing home business manager who was confused why I went by Trish when my legal name was Patricia (I have no words. I remained silent during much of his confusion) and writing about cancer (uplifting!), a delightfully negative person posted an article about pizza at local bar with one word: “Meh.”
That “Meh” returned the group to its normal, dark, disgusted with humanity (and certain types of pizza) status quo.
The comments that followed were angry and unhinged and belligerent and completely disconnected—rage over “journalists” getting the town wrong (we are this Haddon not that Haddon!), defiant statements about disliking the bar and disliking the new pizza (which hasn’t been served yet!), sidebars about everything that had nothing to do with anything else, and a demand that the pretzel bites remain on the menu.
It is a very impassioned post with 40 demented comments and counting!
What a joy to return to our normal town arguments inspired by pizza (this is New Jersey!) but about everything but pizza! I hope tomorrow we fight about the tween bike gangs, what store is going into the old Rite Aid, what we use the old auto shop at the high school for, and of course, the rules of the official Buy Nothing group. I also have high hopes that someone will relate a very harrowing story of being Ding-Dong ditched at 10 am when they were not home but recorded it on the Ring and were triggered by all the "What ifs" (What if I was home and had a dog that was napping? What if I happened to have a gun and thought a doorbell signaled a home invasion? WHAT IF THEY WOKE UP THE BABY I DO NOT HAVE?) (Note: this is a very real conversation I enjoyed reading!)
Maybe if everyone is feeling saucy, someone bring up the turf argument! It’s been a while and artificial sports fields get everyone very, very upset about how their pizza was served at the bar across the street.
Yeah, I know, that last sentence seems to make no sense. But if you live here or in another small town, you this, in your bones, to be completely reasonable.
I do know one thing that we won’t fight over: the foxes. They are the only thing in town that is immune from opinion, but not mange. But, that's a story for another day.
By the way, this post was inspired by my new favorite book Save What’s Left by Elizabeth Castellano. I also recommend The Society of Shame by Jane Roper and The Memo by Rachel Dodes.
Comments
Post a Comment