Big, Small

I forget sometimes how different small towns are from real cities. My parents still live in the same neighborhood where The Brother and I grew up, a suburban enclave of tract homes in the Santa Monica foothills, population maybe 20,000. I drove there yesterday to knock out a list of things in one shot: dental appointment, oil change, car wash, 10 loads of laundry, and a visit with my dog.

The dealer was busy when I dropped off my car for its oil change, and so I had to wait a couple of hours. I walked first into the service waiting lounge but quickly walked out when I saw Fox News blaring on the TV and two guys in gimme hats staring at it reverently. Then I went outside to look for some place to shop or grab lunch. My choices: two quick lube joints, a gas station, a pool supply store, a yogurt shop, and a mom and pop coffee shop that I remember from my now ancient carb-loading days for swim team. I took an outside table at the coffee shop and tried not to make eye contact with the waitress. She was in her twenties, earnest and sweet, but she had only one other table apart from mine and she had that desperate look about her that people get when they know they're not going anywhere beyond the dead end they're at. There was absolutely nothing interesting on the menu, so I ordered a turkey sandwich with a small green salad instead of the default fries. My lunch first came out as a tuna sandwich, which the waitress took back. The actual turkey sandwich then arrived 5 minutes later, with effusive apologies. I almost wished I'd eaten the tuna just so the poor girl wouldn't have said sorry so many times. The sandwich was really the size of two, the salad an embarrassing mountain of iceberg smothered with two kinds of shredded cheese and diced olives. In the city, I've grown accustomed to dishes that are composed of only two or three bites. But in the suburbs, people tend to take quantity over quality wherever they can get it: from their mammoth sandwiches, from their bus-sized SUVs, from their great big swathes of mortgaged land.

Once the car was finished, I went to my parents' house and took the dogs out for a walk. The dogs are suburbanites too, scared of trucks and the first hint of traffic but trusting of every passing stranger. Within a three mile radius, everyone knows the dogs by name. The dogs know which direction they want to walk--sometimes toward the house with the lady who comes out barefoot with treats and sometimes toward the mini mall where a cat stands watch in the window of a country-bumpkin art gallery.

Things moves slowly in the suburbs. There's no sense of urgency, no sense of ambition for what might lie ahead. Instead, there's a sense that what's right here will do just fine, that's there's no need to look any farther. I suppose that's peaceful, but I can't fundamentally understand it. I'm buoyed by possibility, by the hope that what's around the corner is newer and better and more exciting than whatever's gone by. I'm charged by even the tiniest of personal discoveries: a painting I've never seen, a meal I've never tried, an accent I've never heard. I like noise and crowds and just knowing that something is open through the small dark hours of the night.

The coffee shop where I ate at while my car was serviced closed at 4. There had been one change there though. As long as I can remember, the coffee shop only took cash. They now take credit cards.