Unscripted

I grew up believing small towns were a little bit scripted.

Not in a weird “Truman Show” kind of way. More like The “Wonder Years” sort of way. The place where the same faces kept showing up and everything seemed connected in a way that made sense.

Even growing up in Cedar Springs, it felt like there were main characters. You know what I mean? The people everyone recognized, whose names came up often enough that you felt like you knew them, even if you didn’t? They were the familiar faces at events, the longtime coaches, business owners, or people who seemed to anchor things without having to tell you that's who they are and what they're doing.

It made the town feel like it had a cast. And if there was a cast, it wasn’t a stretch to assume there was some kind of script too.

On television, the local diner had character but no health code violations, and the festivals were well attended. The town troublemaker was harmless and only misunderstood in the end, and even the disagreements felt manageable, like they would just resolve themselves before the music swelled and the episode wrapped.

I don’t remember consciously thinking that’s how real life would be. But somewhere along the way, I must have absorbed it, because adulthood in a small town feels much different.

Unlike in an episode, everyone doesn't just get along. Not here...or anywhere, really.

People disagree about money, about growth, about what should be preserved and what should be replaced. Sometimes those disagreements stay online, but sometimes they move into meetings. Oddly enough, sometimes they just linger for a while before something else takes their place entirely. Regardless, life keeps moving around them.

That part never really showed up in the television version, though. Everything was always neatly packaged and back to normal before the next episode.

For a while, I think I measured real life against that earlier picture in my head. Why isn’t this smoother? Why can’t everyone just settle it and move on?

But towns aren’t episodes. Issues don’t resolve themselves in twenty-three minutes with seven minutes of commercials. Conflicts stretch out. Conversations resurface, decisions take longer than anyone expects, buildings age, budgets tighten, and people either reconsider their positions or don't. Sometimes the result of those conflicts are so impactful, they're felt years later, forcing the town to no longer feel the same way it used to.

The older I get, the more I think maybe that’s what actually makes a small town work. Not that everyone agrees, but that they continue living alongside one another despite their disagreements.

There’s no soundtrack rising in the background when something settles down. No neat ending to signal that everything is tied up. Just another week and another season.

Queue the ending credits.