Any and all small town folks will probably agree with these three. I was trying to pick out a couple and decided to limit myself to three since I do still love my small town. Now, I'm sure that maybe a couple of these may happen in larger cities as well, but they seem so much more obvious and apparent in small towns.
1. People You Know. Everywhere.
To me it's almost like you can't step out the door without knowing somebody. Like, literally since my mom is friends with the couple across the street. We go to Walmart and get stopped ten million times by, usually, my mom's friends that she hasn't seen in a while. It's happened at gas stations too. It can happen anywhere and everywhere in town. It just means that twenty minute trip you were planning on to go to Walmart will just end up being actually an hour long trip. So don't go on your lunch break!
2. Trains
OH. MY. LORD. It's like no matter how far away you may or may not live from the tracks, you hear them! And then when you do live close to the tracks, it's absolute misery when trains go through town! I get they're supposed to blow the horn or whatever for every crossing, but most of these engineer's are just laying on it! Do you know how hard it is to sleep when suddenly a train is blowing your house away with its noise at three o'clock in the morning? Very! Like, honk it a couple times before you reach the crossing and be done with it. Please. UGH.
3. Cliques
All the movies with the high school full of little groups and cliques... It's like a replica of a small town. In my town it even seems obvious in the elementary schools sometimes, if that tells you something. The popular kids who have more money usually versus the kids with no money and then there's the middle class kids who somehow get stuck in a weird middle void of knowing both 'popular' and 'unpopular' kids. Somehow end up being both popular and unpopular depending on who does and doesn't like you. In a way, it's like The Outsiders, the squares versus the greasers, or even all the different cliques in The Breakfast Club. It's a pet peeve for me because I hate the way it makes the town seem, and the fact that people can be so mean to those less fortunate. So what their parents can't afford brand new clothes every year? At least we all, mostly, have roofs over our heads and food we can eat.
So these are really just the top three that I wanted to poke at. For me, living in a small town, these are the three that pop up the most, I think. It's hard to not notice them and not get angry or irritated about it, especially the trains. That probably has got to be my biggest pet peeve about living in a small town. But I also hate the cliques and how there seems to be some invisible line between those with more and those with less. Maybe some day we can change the cliques!