A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a suburb in middle America.  The neighborhoods were quiet and safe and mostly white.  The schools were good, the crime rate was low, the parks were clean, and the streets were safe.  Many people moved to this sparkling suburb to raise their families and live the good life.

There was only one problem:  crippling boredom.  All the restaurants and stores were mediocre chains, and the people were robots.  Instead of living their respective lives, they forgot what it was like to be interesting human beings.  They went to work, came home, didn't talk to their children about anything important, watched TV, then went to bed.  On the weekends, they lived vicariously through their children, driving them to and from soccer and baseball and volleyball and football games.  Sometimes, these grown human beings would simply ignore said games, preferring to stare at their phones instead, more far more likely, they spent their bleacher-time berating referees and umpires for screwing up calls in an Under 10 recreational league.  And the insults got worse when their children grew up and were placed on "select" teams for which mommy and daddy paid hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars.

Then the parents would assemble somewhere to drink too much and talk about other people, or they would drive their kids to a sleepover, looking for some time alone - never realizing that those teenagers were drinking too much and sending pictures of themselves in compromising situations all through the vast world of the internet.

But this suburb ... how lovely were the homes!  The landscaping!  The beautifully manicured lawns and showy flowers!  While not everyone was rich, they bought landscaping rocks by the ton and hundreds of bags of mulch and dozens of pretty little luminaries to place outside.  Wind chimes and seasonal flags and stone angels sat outside every house,  This suburb was clearly a place where good people lived.

The real story in this fairy tale suburbia, though, is behind the front doors.  What is the real story?

I have a theory:  I think suburbs are the perfect hiding place.  Some people belong there - 100%.  Those people are totally on board with having kids and settling down into oblivion.  Block parties and book clubs are all they need.  (Just kidding, people don't read books anymore, silly!)  But there are others who entered the suburbs unprepared.  They thought the move was just another phase of life; they didn't realize the potential for a neighborhood to become an oppressive chloroform cloud, choking out individuality and creativity.

So they just breathed deep.  And then it was too late.