As someone who's lived in both teeny tiny towns and relatively big cities, I'm familiar with the sort of "culture shock" that can come with moving from the country to the city and vice versa.
Recently, redditor u/citytiger asked, "Redditors that grew up/live in the country, what’s something every city kid should know?"
Here are some of their top answers:
Some responses have been edited for length/clarity.
1. "If you move to the country to get away from the city, you will smell poop."
2. "Depending on how small the area is, when dating, if you don't know if you are related or not, FIND OUT."
3. "If you start a fight with someone in a small town bar, you actually just started a fight with the entire bar."
4. "Chances are that everyone in the local grocery store already knows all about you even if you’ve never spoken directly to them. They also probably already know what you drive and where you live."
5. "Purple spray paint on fence posts and trees means no trespassing."
6. "Poverty looks different in the country. Most poor people in the country have a garden, deer to hunt, and maybe chickens, so food insecurity — especially in summer — is not as much of a problem."
7. "If your car breaks down (in the daytime) and someone (not a cop) pulls up behind you, that person is about to volunteer to do minor mechanical work or even flat tow your car for free."
8. "Being in the country has more privacy but far less anonymity."
9. "Coyotes are not like dogs. Stop feeding them."
10. "We had a group of kids come out to our farm on a field trip. The looks on their faces when potatoes magically appeared from the ground was priceless! So important for kids to learn where their food comes from."
11. "Leave gates how you find them — they are open or closed for a reason."
12. "You might not realize how much noise there is from bugs after dark."
13. "Don't pick fights or run your mouth to people in small towns that you live in if you just moved there. Chances of you seeing that person again are 100%."
14. "Just because a party is in the middle of the woods or a field doesn't mean the police won't break it up."
15. "A big part of what kept me on the straight and narrow is that my dad would always read the arrest and crime section of our local newspaper and would tell me when any of my peers got into trouble (so-and-so in your high school class got a DUI, etc.), and he knew who most of them were because he knew their parents."
16. "Don't walk behind a horse, and don't touch random metal fences unless you want to get a shock."
17. "We aren’t in any hurry, and you can’t make us."
18. "I grew up in a small town. This is why there’s a difference between city drivers and country drivers — if you cut someone off or honk, they know who you are and might ask you to explain yourself the next time you see them."
19. "It might take an hour to get to the bigger grocery stores if you don’t want to just grab your food at the smaller grocery store nearby."
20. "When the schools closed for COVID-19, there were legitimate problems getting the free school lunches out to the kids experiencing poverty. They have absolutely no ability to get to the pick-up point without a car (several miles, no sidewalks, bad weather.)"
21. "Everybody knows everybody’s damn business. There are no secrets."
22. "YOU get over for the tractor coming down the road, not the other way around."
23. "Small town cops are really bored, so you probably shouldn’t speed."
24. "It gets dark — very dark."
25. "All those sounds at night are normal. Be alarmed if there are no sounds — that’s when shit is about to get wild."
26. And finally: "When you’re in the middle of nowhere, it doesn’t matter if you don’t like your neighbors because you’re all each other have out there."
People who live in the city — now it's your turn! What should people who live in the country know? Share your answers in the comments!
