I am a rule-follower. I appreciate order and safety and being a good citizen, and will do my part to contribute to order and safety and being a good citizen. This means obeying traffic lights, parking only in designated areas and being respectful of other people’s property, space, and time.
These things are simply part of the social contract when you live in a densely populated city, as are overpaying for coffee, pretending you are not standing in a stinky man’s armpit on the subway, and understanding that the difference between summer and winter footwear are the height of your Chuck Taylors.
In Toronto, I obeyed the signs that told me not to trespass, idle, enter, or stand. I did not hop fences (save for a few midnight picnics on the grounds of Casa Loma in my youth), enter through the exit or assume that I had the right-of-way. And I expected the same of others.
Then we move out here to the cornfield, and I swear to you, it is anarchy. And not the Emma Goldman/Noam Chomsky/socks-with-sandals kind of anarchy I am used to: these people do not obey the rules. In fact, I don’t think these people have even considered that the rules may exist.
Case in point: last May 24 (I hope you read that as May TooFor) we went to a friends’ house for a perfectly lovely backyard barbeque. The adults were relaxing and visiting, and the kids were running amok in the ample backyard (ample backyards are still a novelty for me). Once the sun went down, all the kids were given sparklers (my spidey senses yelled Danger! but the beer in my hand told me chill out! You live in the country now where toddlers get sparklers!), and we headed into the ravine to shoot off our own fireworks.
You heard that right: we headed into the ravine. To shoot off our own fireworks.
Trust me when I tell you that I was the only one in the parade of families heading into the ravine to shoot off our own fireworks, who punctuated nearly every step with, “Are we allowed to do this? Is this ok? Aren’t we breaking like, six bylaws right now? Is this legal? Don’t at least two of the friends in this group work for the city? Are we allowed to do this? How is this happening?”
And then, as we ducked out of the way of the exploding missiles being poorly aimed right above our heads, I understood:
This could never happen in Toronto because there are not enough ravines to accommodate 2.5 million cowboys and their homespun, questionably safe fireworks displays. Instead, we all went to the free, gigantic fireworks displays that the city put on in a designated, regulated space. In a city of 2.5 million people, that is how it has to be in order to keep everybody’s privacy, land, space, and comfort protected. As with all the signs and the ability to ignore the armpits in your face on a crowded subway, it’s all part of the social contract.
But there are less than 40,000 people in this town. Shooting off our own fireworks in a ravine in a sparsely populated area is fine. We were not disturbing anybody’s privacy, space, land, or comfort.
The social contract still exists here, but it is different.
Like children zooming by on ATVs, picnicking on a stranger’s private dock along the river, parking anywhere, or partying in a cornfield, what looks like anarchy to one is simply status quo to another.
And as long as people here continue to look both ways before crossing the road, I suppose I can get used to it.
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