There are very few instances since I’ve moved to Norman in which I felt like I didn’t quite belong. One of them, a very trivial situation, was the first day I wore my boots to class.

I felt like an animal in a zoo, like some people had never seen a girl wear boots outside of “dress up” occasions. It wasn’t until that day in late October that I realized I hadn’t seen one person wear them on campus except on game days. That day was probably the first day in my life when I felt like the most stereotypical “country” person around.

Since then, I’ve noticed other differences between small town life and the rest of the world. One of my best friends is a Chicago native. To her, even Norman is a small town. While eating lunch together a few weeks ago, I was telling her about my hometown when I mentioned that we are very proud to have three stoplights. She dropped her fork and exclaimed, “Wait, you count your stoplights!?” before doubling over in laughter. I suppose that it simply hadn’t occurred to me that, in places where the population has more than four digits, people don’t necessarily count their stoplights, and they certainly don’t boast about how many their town has. This realization of a culture difference led to a much more in-depth discussion about my hometown.

It blew her mind that while her closest neighbors lived five feet above her head, there are two acres of land between my home and my neighbor's home (and we're only that close because we live "in town"). I graduated with 76 people, most of whom I went to school with my entire life. My Friday nights consisted of either hanging out on the tailgates of trucks in the stadium parking lot, or gathering at a friend's house with guitars and gospel songs. Yes, we speak to strangers, especially to the elderly and always with a smile and good manners. Our community is one of the strongest networks of people I've ever seen. Being so close-knit not only means that everybody knows everybody, but that everybody cares for everybody else.

Having taken a trip to Chicago myself last spring, I definitely see how she could have such a hard time grasping some of the concepts that seem so commonplace to me (especially the stoplights). Here in Norman, we seem to have met in the middle of new ways of living: she doesn't get flipped off by drivers, and I have no idea how many stoplights there are.