Redditor u/official_biz asked the question, "What's the most 'small town' thing you've witnessed?" I realized that my little hometown is HUGE compared to everybody else's tiny townships. Here are some of the best responses.
1. "We have a village Facebook page. Every time the ice cream man drives into the village, the entire page goes ballistic. People send live updates of where the van is and which direction he's heading. The ice cream man has started accepting DMs, so he knows which streets to go down."
2. "The traffic on the 'main street' of my town is so sparse that two drivers going opposite directions can stop and talk to each other for a few minutes without causing any problem."
— Unknown
3. "I’m from a town of less than 2,000 people. When I worked at the grocery store, people would often drop off stuff for my family members because they didn’t want to drive all the way to our house. I no longer live there, but I recently got a call from my daughter. She had been stopped for speeding and handed over her license and insurance, which happened to be in my mother’s name. The officer goes, 'Hey, you’re Donnie’s granddaughter! I ain’t gonna write you a ticket, but I’m telling Donnie when I see him tomorrow 'cause we’re going fishing.' She replied, 'I think I’d rather have the ticket.'"
4. "I used to answer the phone at a local pharmacy to park the calls while waiting for medicine. Knowing who was called by their voice seemed normal."
5. "My fiancé took me to a popular festival in his tiny hometown. Some guy nodded and waved at him on the street. I asked how they knew each other, and my fiancé told me he was the only other guy in town with the same name as him. Also, his dad told him not to sleep with a particular chick because she might be his half-sister."
6. "My dogs got out while I was working. The police called my niece's elementary school (she was a 5th grader) to get her to round them up and take them back home."
7. "Our lone town cop would make us stand there and pour out every beer we had, bag up the cans, and take them with him. He knew we weren’t driving cause we walked everywhere and threatened to tell our parents, though we only did it on occasion."
8. "A 'parade' consisted of like, three goats and four children."
9. "My town opened a strip club when I was about 18. My friends and I were all pumped to go. For some reason, we thought it'd be strangers stripping and not Judy from math class and the blonde, Aubrey, who used to work nights at Wendy's."
10. "One spring, the front page of the local newspaper's top headline was 'Deer Finds Grass in [town name].' The fact that someone had a picture of a deer who found some grass meant that winter might finally be over, which is the big news that everyone cares about."
11. "I grew up in a town of 150 people. I moved away, but I kept in touch. A friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook a few months ago, tagging another friend: 'Hey, Bubba, your pig got loose and is running around the Dollar General parking lot. Get him!' People were more surprised that they had a Dollar General store than they were about Bubba's pig."
12. "I left the grocery store and forgot a bag. Another customer brought it to my house."
13. "When we moved to a town of about 1,000 people, the local newspaper published our family portrait on the front page to announce the new preacher had arrived. It was not a small pic either. It easily took up a sixth of the front page. My sisters and I would ride our bikes all over town with our gaggle of friends. My mom would get phone calls from strangers telling her they just saw us and we were fine. It was just how the moms helped each other keep track of their kids."
14. "I've seen people get a DUI charge on a lawn mower."
15. "I grew up in a small town of 200 people. If you drove up the mountain there was an even smaller town there. One day, I was visiting a friend, and we were sitting on his porch talking for about two hours, and when the third car in all that time drove past, he remarked, 'Quite a bit of traffic today!'"
16. "A local bank was robbed, and one of the tellers told the police to bring her a yearbook from about 10 years earlier, and she could point the robber out. He had been in the grade before hers in school."
17. "I lived in a town of about 5,000. A woman walked into the DMV on a Friday, saw that there were three people ahead of her, and left to come back another time when they weren't so busy."
18. "People riding lawnmowers in fast food drive-thru lines, many driven by children."
19. "The first ATM in our county in 1995 made the front page of the paper."
20. "The town I grew up in had one stoplight and a population of about 400. The police department couldn’t afford a radar gun, so the one policeman used his wife’s hairdryer. We had some real Mayberry-type antics during my childhood. I wouldn’t trade it for anything."
21. "In a town of about 1000, I was going to a house to drink and play video games after a basketball game. The only cop on duty that night just so happened to be driving up the road and saw someone carrying a 30-rack of Busch Light. He pulled all of us out of the house, took the 3-4 cases of beer, and said he was going to let us off with a warning, NOT call our parents, and that we should use this as our coming to God moment to stop drinking."
22. "We could ride bikes all day on the roads and not once have to move for a car."
23. "I live in a small city (70,000 people), and two years ago, I went on a first date with a guy I met on Instagram. We went for a coffee, and while we were there, my dad appeared outside the window and happily greeted him. It turns out the guy was his best friend’s son, and everyone knew of our date."
24. "The entire school had 27 students comprised of the offspring from twelve families. A game of kiss-chase is chaotic when you're related to more than half of the players."
25. "I lived in a small town. When I moved there, people would ask, 'Whose house did you buy?'"
26. "I entered a general store in a small town, and the owner was playing billiards with some other men in town. I asked to buy a Coke, and a guy smiled from across the hall and asked me just to take what I needed and leave some cash on the counter, assuming it was approximately the correct amount."
27. "Oh damn, I'm so guilty of this! My county is about 15,000 people in total and has an enormous total of ONE stoplight in the whole county. If there are more than 2-3 cars at the light, it is officially a traffic jam! If there's more than two people in line, it's too damn busy to be there."
Hey, BuzzFeed Community — do you have a "small town" story? If so, share your own in the comments below or use this anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.