Stranger In A Familiar Land

A few weeks ago I talked about my trip to the New England Aquarium and how I feel that on occasion it is a really good idea to play tourist in your hometown. People have a tendency to put down their city where they have lived for a long time as boring when the fault really lies with them. If you picked up a local guidebook you may be surprised to learn how many programs are going on all the time. And some of the stuff being done is really creative ideas that you never would have imagined you could take advantage of. But playing tourist doesn't necessarily have to mean hunting down a new adventure every weekend either, as sometimes going back to a place you have already been can be the best idea of all. There is a general feeling that you only need to experience some things once, which is why we tend to take amazing sites for granted as we pass by them every day, completely forgetting that there are people in there whose sole job responsibility is to change things around so people have reason to keep coming back. Going to a museum once and then expecting the exhibits to never change is a crazy way to think and yet most people ignore the museums in the city they live in for years at a time. That is why on occasion it is a good idea to stop in, check out the new stuff and remind yourself just how much fun your city can be. Just the other day I was reminded that you don't even need to go off and play tourist to experience a whole new world, as you can just do mundane tasks and have an adventure - it is just a matter of driving far enough.

The other afternoon I had to run up to the North Shore. Those who are from the South Shore of Massachusetts know why this is a big deal but for those who are not from the area, allow me to explain: Despite the fact Massachusetts is not a particularly big state it still manages to be made up by several poorly-defined areas. You have the rather generic "Downtown" which is obviously Boston but also can includes Brookline, Allston, Cambridge and Brighton depending on who you are talking to. Next there is the "South Shore" which starts as soon as you turn off the Expressway and ends when you hit the Cape. Then there is the "North Shore" which is pretty much everything from Everett until you hit Maine. The two "shores" also extend westward until you hit Rt 495, which conveniently forms a loop around the inner half of the state and we typically use the Mass Pike as the equator in this scenario. There is also this a nebulous area known as "MetroWest" which is filled with two kinds of people: the ones who tell people they are from Boston when they visit other states or the ones who really would rather live in New Hampshire but can't make the commute work. That starts at 495 and stops roughly when you hit the Pacific Ocean. What is even more fascinating is that people who live in one area see traveling to another one of these places as a gigantic hassle. Seriously, there are people who live in Dover that would rather visit Spain than Wakefield. I'm not quite that bad but I am will admit that I rarely see any reason to go to the North Shore. Even though I am quite fearful of becoming too insulated the practical part of my brain just sees it as a waste of gas. This quick trip certainly didn't do anything to change my mind.

Because I hit almost no traffic on my way up I got to my destination far earlier than expected. Since I didn't want to arrive too early this left me with a few minutes to kill. (The other reason I don't go to the North Shore? Given the quick nature of how I do things it isn't time effective. Why drive an hour and a half round trip to complete an errand that takes 20 minutes?) The good news for me was that right across from my intended destination was my favorite store, Marshall's. However, what should have been a familiar setting felt foreign. The thing about stores like this, where the merchandise and the layout can be very independent from one location to another, is that even though they all operate under the same store name they can be very different. It quickly became clear that the North Shore people have a very different set of priorities. For example, I don't know why but this location had a strange amount of t-shirts for teams which are not from this area. Honestly, for a couple of seconds I felt like I had been transported to an entirely different part of the country and I was only about 40 miles from my house. I wasn't about to ask if they still accepted American money but it was like when you were in high school and you went to another school for a track meet or other sporting event and had the chance to look around the other school. On the surface it was just another school and it shouldn't have been all that different from the one you attended every day, especially since you were all learning the same state-mandated curriculum. But all those small differences ended up combining into one unnerving experience.

At least I can take solace in knowing I am far from the only person who feels this way. When you are in a new place for the first time it is human nature to look for something that is familiar and then cling to it. I can not tell you the number of people who have talked about moving to a different city and the first thing they want to do is find a Dunkin Donuts because it reminds them of home, only to be crushed when they don't quite get the coffee right. There is a reason McDonald's has served over a billion people - the burgers taste the same in California as they do in New York. Don't get me wrong, it is not that I am saying I want uniformity in all areas of life... just the retail part of it. [Sidebar: It would obviously come in handy at this time of year. When I think about all the time I have spent driving from store to store looking for an item and being able to do nothing more than cross my fingers and hope before I walk through the doors, that certainly feels like a flawed system. There is something to be said for any store which can tell me not to waste my time and gas driving around because not only do they not have it, they are sure none of their stores do either since they all have the same stuff.] I know I started this post by advocating going back to places you have already been just to see what has changed but looking through racks of clothes is not exactly the same as get a first-hand view of a Monet. Then again, maybe the reason people don't go back to their local museums as frequently is because they are afraid of how much has changed. Expecting to see the same exhibits from when you were last there and having the entire place be different can almost be worse than no change at all. Still, I think people should suck it up and give it a try. Certainly couldn't be any more disorienting than standing in a Massachusetts store trying to sell you merchandise for the Green Bay Packers.