It’s really funny these days, living in a major metropolis.
- I have to say that I’m genuinely intimidated by the level of activity and number of humans who live here most of the time.
I do my best to blend in, but everything is pretty overwhelming to me. Where I grew up, you see, we had a population of 7000 people and a lot of corn fields. We literally had one stoplight in my town. “Bring your tractor to school day” was a huge event at my high school. Needless to say, it wasn’t a bustling town. In fact, the biggest event that the town ever held was the annual Settler’s Days weekend. It included a small fair and amusement rides, as well as a sad parade. The only thing was, our town wasn’t even equipped with the infrastructure for these basic necessities! Every year, the town suffered huge power outages when the carnival got going. Every year, we lost all air conditioning for at least 4 days. Whenever the power went out, so did our ability to modify the indoor air quality at home. The temperature was usually well into the 80s, so it was a considerable problem without central cooling at home. We would arrive home from the little festival on the first night, only to find the house was dark, burning hot and humid. There was no point in calling an HVAC professional or even fiddling with the AC unit ourselves, because we didn’t own a backup generator to get power. Each year we just had to accept it was going to be a long, hot, and sleepless weekend without any air conditioning. Eventually, we started leaving town entirely, fleeing to operational central cooling systems during the big event weekend.