Every Place Is Like Jersey

Our good friend Esmond is not much for traveling either. In fact, for many years he used to revel in the fact that he had been no further south than Harrisonburg, Virginia, no further west than Pittsburgh and no further North than Toronto and no further east than the Atlantic.

Then he got a job which had a lot of traveling for business. So he ended up going to a lot of places in the States. But mundane places like Detroit and Cleveland. And then he bit the bullet and went to Italy for a wedding. His first really big trip.

Through it all, one of the chief reasons he argued against traveling is that every place is like Jersey. Esmond is from New Jersey if you didn't already draw that inference.

He argued the topography of the land often looked the same. Trees looked the same. And they had all the same stuff. But how you got it was different. The money might look different and the accents might change but basically every place was still a lot like Jersey.

Now, all of this started in reaction to my going to London for fall semester our senior year of college. A bunch of us theatre types would end up going to London and I think he resented it. So he came up with this crazy theory. (Note: this is the same man who would drive around and shout out the window to couples, "You'll die alone!")

But I've done some traveling. I've been to Paris. London. Ireland. Spain. Amsterdam(for one Lost Weekend). And I have to say---he's kinda right.

I mean, there are a ton of places that you can look at and say---these streets are old. These buildings are old. It's quaint. But much of the U.S. is exactly like Jersey.

But that doesn't mean I don't think we shouldn't see it. Because really the things that make places places is the people. If you have a bad reaction to a town. If you say, I hate New York City. I don't really think you hate New York. I think you hate the experiences you've had. And you think the City is at fault. But it's not. That's just you making it so.

Just like when people say they hated highschool. They didn't hate highschool. They did not hate the physical place where that school stood. But they hated what people did to them. Or they hated the fact they were such a wimp. Or they hated that for whatever reason, The Powers That Be decided that for four years you should be covered in pimples resembling the face of a piece of pizza.

Maybe that's why people are always making fun of New Jersey. Because what they really are doing is making fun of themselves.

Wow, I'm brilliant.