Life in hometown

I go out for the evening, to meet a friend downtown. I am thinking on the way about where I should park, and then remember: Oh yeah, it's Victoria on a Tuesday night. I have my choice of spots. We are the only people in the restaurant for a good half hour, and when we leave there are only a half dozen tables with customers.

And they still undercook my fish.

The only place that is busy is the coffee shop, which for some reason at 9pm on a Tuesday night is packed. This is a university town.

I don't have to stop for a single traffic light all the way back. 

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I head out to the mall nearby, the one I worked at as a teenager. It has the advantage of having a Sears, which has cheap small boy clothes. I find underwear but no shoes or bathing wear that the boy will consent to. We go for a walk in the mall -- there isn't much else to do in this town -- and I get The Boy one of those little ride-in cars / shopping trolleys and an ice cream for 20 minutes of peace.

The demographics of this area have changed. I went to a high school with over 1000 students, in just two grades. There were 500 kids in my graduating class, and I swear to you at the grad ceremony people walked across the stage that I'd never seen before, in two years of being at that school. 

In the last seventeen (EEEP!) years the demographics have slightly changed. My elementary school, across the road from my high school, has closed. The high school is now four grades instead of two, because there's so much space. 

The mall ... the mall. A black hole of bad knitwear. No one should ever own that much knitwear, especially with bows (!!) and ruffles (!!!). I know they are catering to a neighborhood that is now almost entirely retired folks, and no new families because no one can afford to move here (or no one will die and leave open the houses, and who would want to, there are NO SCHOOLS?!) but please, people: the knitwear is blinding. There's even a Cotton Ginny which I will not claim holds the world's most stylish haut couture, but at least had decent t-shirts. SOmetimes a jacket / hoodie or two, and a nice pair of cords for weekend wear. And I think still does in other areas of the country but here ... ruffles. Bows. Enormous prints. YEEEAHHHHHHH. 

And don't even get me started on the number of places selling comfortable shoes. Not a high heeled strappy sandal in sight, I tell you.

On the way home I went by the park -- make out park, it was, as a teen. Because of course my recently toilet trained child waits until we are in the car to let me know he is desperate to pee. So we stop by there and he does his thing and I realize that there is almost no one there, and the cars that are there are full of -- you guessed it -- retired people. Crazy. 

I didn't expect anyone would be there making out at 3:30 pm, but there used to at least be CHILDREN. It's like one of those apocalyptic stories where we've all lost our fertility due to nuclear bombs and the population is all ancient. 

But at least they have knitwear and comfortable shoes.

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I wondered a little bit when we got rid of our tv if our child would become addicted because of the deprivation. And considering his first words every morning are "Let's watch Treehouse!" I think I might well be right. 

This afternoon after our trip to the mall, we came home and The Boy said "I want to watch Treehouse!" and I replied, well, *I* want to go outside! In the hopes, of course, that he would realize what a great idea that was.

Instead, I got a thoughtful pause and then a bright face, and "How about you do your thing, and I'll do mine??!"

Whoops.