"Cheers" to Rector, Arkansas

Truvy: Louie brought his new girlfriend over, and the nicest thing I can say is all her tattoos are spelled correctly. »                    
 Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.   Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows Your name. You wanna go where people know people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows your name                                 source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/cheerslyrics.html

When I was a teen, I could not wait to achieve some degree of anonymity, get away to some place, any place, where Nobody Knew My Name!  When I was a teen, and everyone knew everything I did, or it seemed that way, and they were “tattle-tales” to boot, escape was the only way out.  My growing up was protected because of the care all the citizens felt for all of its children, and in retrospect, Camden, Arkansas, was a great place to grow up.  But, when speeding down a paved country road, dancing too close to a sweetheart, or stealing a kiss in a darkened corner at the dance made headlines in my living room before I had time to get home, I wanted to be anywhere people did not know that “little Dansby girl.”  I tried an escape to college, but my parents had a hot line to the Dean of Women.  Go figure!

Now, I am delighted to be learning to enjoy my retirement in a tiny town where, would you believe, “lots of people” know my name.  Prior to January, 2012, walking down the halls of Bartlett High School, attending a meeting with the school system, or working with groups of students and teachers fed my need for the acknowledgement that I matter in this world.  Leaving Bartlett High School after 27 years and Shelby County Schools after 39 years, there would naturally be a gap to be filled: my need for relationship with people, and they with me.  I was moving to a tiny town, where I had connection through my husband, but not in my own right.  I had previously been known as my parents’ daughter when I grew up in Camden.  In Bartlett and Shelby County, I had grown beyond identification as David and Richard’s mother to being “Jane.”
Comfort can come in being lost in the crowd of a big city; being unknown can be safe. You can disappear, if you wish. But I had grown accustomed to being acknowledged, on a small scale, anyway.  I liked it, then, and like it now.

Today, the pharmacist says, “Hi, Jane, we’ve got your prescriptions ready for you.”  The grocer says, “We got that bread you and Marvin like.”  The banker and the tellers cash my check.  The librarian orders books for me and the preacher stops to talk.  The teachers at the school came to my garage sale and I gave them goodies for their classrooms. When I am in Wal-Mart, I recognize familiar faces from Rector. Everybody who drives any vehicle waves to everyone else.

Just as in anything, there is that “flip side” or “Side B.”  As long as I don’t speed down a deserted road, ride on the back of Bobby Petrino’s Harley, or kiss men I am not married to, I figure I’m fairly safe.
I like living in this small town, where people are all the same, they seem glad you came, and “everybody knows your name.”