Tourist in your own hometown

[Tommy_Carcetti]

This September, my best friend will be getting married. He is actually getting married right down the street from my old house where I grew up in...except that because my parents sold the old house this past spring and moved down to Florida (closer to me now), I will not be staying there.

With that in mind, I'm thinking this might be something of a surreal experience. The place where I grew up for 18 years, where my family lived for decades, where I have all my childhood memories, is no longer officially home to me. Driving past the old house knowing it no longer belongs to my family--that will be quite weird. Staying at a hotel in my small town, instead of my old bedroom, that is just going to feel so strange.

Like you are now on the outside looking in. No longer are you in your own "hometown". You are in Anytown, USA, without any ties or connections to the community. With the exception of all those intangile memories of what used to be, and maybe a familar face or two of someone you know from the past, you are suddenly a stranger.

Has anyone else had this experience? Where they have returned to the area where they grew up long after they and everyone else they knew had moved? Is it really as strange as I think it will be?

[bif]

1. Try going to a 20th or 30th high school reunion

Now that's weird. I had a chance to go in my parents old home where I grew up a while back. It was for sale and they were having an open house. I passed because I knew, 25 years later, there would b nothing the same as I remembered it. My wife and daughter did go and thought it was cool But I just couldn't bring myself to go in it. It'll probably be another 10 years or more before I have another opportunity. Oh well.

[stuntcat]

2. 18 years!

That's how long I lived in my old town too. 18 years in the same house, in Lumberton NC.
I still have a relative in the area but I've moved far away and rarely go back, I've ridden through it on I-95 without going into the town at all. But last Fall my aunt and I went there for a week to take care of some things at my Grandma's old house and it was STRANGE driving around town. Things didn't seen familiar at all, the high school had a big addition and looked like a different school, and my old house was still there but all the houses in front of it were gone and the town's new City Hall was practically in my old front yard! They must have come pretty close to tearing down my old house out too so I'm glad they left it, I don't know how it would have felt to see that that house was just GONE

It did feel surreal. I made my aunt go with me to the old graveyard I used to play in and it did look about the same. And we went to the park by the river and I don't think it had changed much, so that was cool. The rest of the town was weird.
I bet your visit 'home' will be strange.

[TZ]

3. I've sort of been there

Moved away from my hometown when I was 4..However my Dad moved back in 1980..so I've repeatedly gone to visit and therefore have been a bit of a tourist from time to time...I've gone to see my old house and playground and its not at all familiar to me.

[Blue Diadem]

4. I'm actually not that far away from where I grew up..it's just

that after my Mom died, we sold the property to a neighbor there. A few years later, he tore down the house so he could utilize the extra land. I haven't driven down that road since my Mom died, I can't imagine seeing an empty wide open space instead of the house I grew up in.

[whistler162]

5. Mel Torme' said it best

http://www.theguitarguy.com/astrange.htm

[DarkTirade]

6. I just moved back to the town I grew up in up until the age of 5 or 6... and I'm 26 now.

That was a bit weird for me.

The pool at my old apartment complex that I almost drowned in when I was 5... I coulda SWORN it was a big pool. But looking at it now... it's TINY. :)