I have lived in a city or suburb for most of my life. So long that I sometimes forget that my earliest memories, and many of my happiest, are rooted in the small town where I spent the formative years of my youth. My town was so small that it didn’t even have a movie theater, a high school, or any type of museum. It had what every tiny town in America has: a post office the size of a small apartment, a general store, and a café for all the farmers to go when their days in the fields have been too long.

I was reminded today, once again, of small town living. Though Mayfield isn’t quite so tiny, more like the famous Canandaigua, the “big” town of 10,000 where my parents worked, where we had to drive to buy groceries, etc., I am amazed at just how small this town is. On the bike rides in all directions I’ve taken from here, it is no more than two miles from my sister’s house, in the middle of town, until I am surrounded by two lane country roads and cornfields. To me, it is almost like existing in another dimension, so used to the city life I am.

Amazingly, they do have a movie theater here, and having nothing else to do after our daily dose of menu planning, five loads of laundry, bathing the kids and the dog and cleaning the entire house, I decided to take the girls there. I of course didn’t need to consult a map or look at Moviefone online: the marquee for the theater, on the town’s main thoroughfare, is obvious from the road with its two daily shows: one at two, one at seven.

“Where is the theater?” Myhili asked before we left.

“Right by Wal-mart.” Of course every town has a Wal-mart.

“Isabella, the movie theater is right by Wal-mart, so I know where it is already,” being the professional who has gone to Wal-mart both in the car and on the Vittetoe Express.

Leaving the house just ten minutes before two, we pulled into the parking lot of the rundown shopping center with the marquee out front. On my right was a concrete three-story building with Regents Bank written on the outside, and in front was a one-story plaza with an L-shaped line of stores and restaurants and empty plots. “Now where is the theater?” I mumbled, and circled around the bank. “Is it in the same building with the bank?”

“Why are you driving in circles?” Mythili’s finger-sucking grumbling had begun.

“Girls, help me find the theater. Do you see it?”

One of the stores was called Gotham City. I drove towards it, thinking that could be the name of a theater. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly. Perhaps a building with a higher roof, at the very least. But as I came back around from Gotham City, I saw the small blue building. It didn’t look like it could be much bigger than the ranch house where Elizabeth and Zak live.

“That’s it?” was our mutual response.

Running out of time before the show, we rushed inside, paid who I think was the owner our fare, bought popcorn, and stepped inside the tiny, empty theater.

“I think the movie’s over,” Isabella pointed out. “Everyone’s gone.”

“That means we get to sit wherever we want,” I smiled, happy about that. We settled in and all of five people shuffled in after us, but the show didn’t quite start on time.

“I think they’re waiting for all the other people to come before they can start the movie,” logical Mythili.

“Sweetie, I think this is about it.”

“How do they play it anyway?”

“With a projector. It’s a machine that runs the film.”

And before I could even turn my head, all three girls were craning their necks to the portions of the projector that actually existed in this minuscule room they call a theater.

Finally the movie came on and halfway through Shrek 4 Riona announced, “It’s a gigantic TV!”

That pretty much sums up our small town visit. We saw our movie on a gigantic TV in a room not much bigger than my sister’s living room in a town not much bigger than our suburban neighborhood. Was the movie just as good? Yes. The popcorn? Yes. The girls just as happy? Yes. Maybe a citified life isn’t the greatest after all.