Once upon a time, I thought of this as Normaltown, USA. They actually have malls and 7-11 and Taco Bell. Neighbors are...well, neighborly. They'll talk to you from their front yards and their kids will ride tricycles down the street. This is the town I lived in for awhile when I was very young, before my family moved to Bloomfield Hills. ( And, after I was born in Ann Arbor but only lived there until I was 2....Goodbye Naked Mile and Hash Bash, before they had a chance to corrupt my infant mind. )
It's a place I often like to go back to in my mind when I wonder what it would be like to stand in someone's sunlit kitchen, maybe drinking something wholesome like orange juice. I would be talking to someone who...okay, maybe she would have had some lipo, but she wouldn't be asking me to feel how realistic the saline her husband bought her for Christmas feels. And, in this fantasy, I would never question anything, again. I would know exactly what my purpose was in this perfect world and I would just be living it. I never let myself stop and think that I might be bored. That would ruin the fantasy, you see.
In my memories of that place, it seems like the sun was always shining, but I know that can't be right since this is Michigan. The neighborhood was so idyllic, of course, that one day a man who lived down the street shot his wife and then, shot himself, leaving behind two small kids that I think went to live with their grandparents. This is where reality intrudes on my memories.
But, since I've moved back here, I wouldn't say Troy is all that different from Bloomfield Hills, anymore. It's getting harder to tell the two places apart. And, of course, I know that the place I remember was never real, anyway. It was just my childish perception of things.....yeah, what was I saying? Maybe, it really is time for me to go to sleep!
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