When I think of my hometown, I think of a tiny town with one traffic light and people I knew too much about. As a kid, that town was everything. I did not know anything outside of it, and I looked at it like it was the greatest place on Earth.

I love that little town and all its quirks. The neighbors that were your best friends on so many adventures. The kids down the street that some ridiculous rivalry started between.

I went to a different high school than the one in my town. So making friends was a little different. I had the friends that I saw pretty much only on weekends and then there were the ones I saw only in school. The two never mixed, and I couldn’t exactly talk about what I did because there was no one who knew the people I was talking about. It made for some interesting discussions. That was my life, though.

It was typical to sit around talking to friends and family and somehow end up gossiping about who was with who and who ended up where. It always happens if townies get together. If someone is not sure of a person you are talking about, you start to go through a list of people they are related to or know. Chances are you know one of these obscure friends and have met the original person you were talking about before. You just did not realize that you did.

The town has not changed in the time that I grew up. The people have, though. Those who were once neighbors have moved and been replaced with others that I know nothing about.

It is a sad thing, but better because that is how towns grow and evolve. And while I get nostalgic about the way things were, I am glad that my tiny town is growing or at least changing because that is how adventures begin, in someone's backyard with friends like no other.

And when you return as a college student or an adult, you realize that you long for the days when you could go out in your backyard and pretend that you were in a different place, of the days when you could run through your house and to the neighbors and back again. That is the hometown I remember and sometimes wish was still around.