is the long commute to work worth it?

Harpy! Shrew! Emasculating she-hyena!

You want, you want, you want! You need, you need, you need! Push! Push! Push!

You're killing me with your shallow and unloving materialism!

Big City Woman, you are nothing but rapacious appetite and foul treachery!

Why can't you be like those simple country girls?

 

Because I like using my own teeth, you pompous, flaccid metro!

 

O! The city has ruined us, Big City Woman! I weep! Weep bitter tears for the future of all humanity!

(curtain)

Seriously, Mr. Rydell, what do you have against us?

 

Still waiting to hear Dan's response to spnited on his definition of a Big City.

Population of our town's about 1.3 mil, but our little neighborhood pocket of it has a small-town vibe, and we're just a few minutes from some really pretty country. It's about a 15-minute commute downtown to work.

 

Yeah, I feel fairly safe in my big city. Population: 1 mill.

 

I still await Mr. Rydell's take on life in the big city. Perhaps he was mistakenly Tasered by a jittery local on his last visit.

 

I got sick of all the traffic and crime in the big cities, and the last one I lived in had a metro area of 1 million-plus. Nasty people everywhere, though I had a nice neighborhood.

I don't wanna live anywhere that's, oh, 200 thousand-plus anymore. I'm now in a place that's about 40,000, and I like it a lot better.

 

But what, specifically, made us nasty? Were we abrupt? Rude? Money hungry? (Be sure to read the one-act Dreiser playlet Flash and I sketched out. The history of inhumane misery in our great cities in fewer than 10 posts. "A triumph..." -- Clive Barnes.)

Were we tasering you? Putting our thumb on the scale at the butcher shop? Taking your paycheck in a game of 3-card Monte?

What did we do to earn your loathing?

Maybe, without outing yourself, you could name one or two of these places that so hardened your heart to us.

 

Nah, let's just leave it at that.

I was raised a country kid, so a lot of it was me. Got tired of seeing concrete everywhere I went. I like to have plenty of green around.

 

Done.

 

OK, but let's leave that big ole paintbrush at home next time, hmmm?

 

Sorry. The language was too strong.

And some of the best people I've known were in the cities.