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"How can people live like this?"

In Comedian, Jerry Seinfeld tells a story about the Glenn Miller Orchestra and a family they encountered en route to a gig. The story goes, the plane the band was flying in landed in the middle of a snowstorm. Near where they landed was a house and they walked into it. The band members, all wet because of the snow and slush, see a family that looked like they came straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. One band member says to the other: "How can people live like this?"

In terms of how I was raised, I had no problem with living in a suburb. By the time I moved away for college, I had enough of suburban life. I have no problem with visiting my family, but I can't live in their environment (for the time being). Where I am in my life now, the squeaky clean and relatively new suburbs aren't the place for me. I sometimes ask myself, "How can people live like this?"

I don't blame or criticize people who want to live the kind of life that Rockwell painted. Sure, innocence may be captured very well in those paintings, but those are only moments in time. Those moments stay frozen in art, but I think it's important to understand that those moments come and go. Of course that's a big "duh!" but I see a lot of people living in daydreams.

I wouldn't object to living in the suburbs, but in my current place in life, I'm not so keen on being a suburbanite. I live in an older part of town with homes and apartments and I don't call it a typical suburb. Places like Flower Mound, Lewisville and McKinney are typical suburbs and they are perfect for people that want to live a suburbanite life. For my life now, I like where I live. I'm close to most of my favorite bars and venues in town, bookstores and record stores. I'm not set on changing this scenery just yet.

I'm sure there are people that see my life and wonder, "How can people live like this?" Well, we all live, regardless of living conditions. That's the important part.

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