Wouldn’t you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they’re always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

I grew up in the 80s, and watched entirely too many reruns of Cheers as a teenager.  There’s something warm and comforting about the theme song, isn’t there?  What a nice idea, going somewhere where everybody knows your name.  That’s sort of what living on Mayne has been like for me.

I don’t claim to know all one thousand residents personally.  I probably couldn’t even name one quarter of them.  I’m better with faces though, and it’s hard to step foot outside my door without seeing somebody I recognize from around town.  My wife worked at the local bakery for a couple of years, so she knows a good deal more people than I do.  In fact, some people only know me as “Rachel’s husband” or “Reilly and Parker’s dad”.

That’s happening less and less these days, but the point is that there’s rarely ever more than a couple degrees of separation between people on this island.  Everyone talks about everybody else as if you should know who they are.  ”You know, Jake who works with Pete…”

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