Life in the big city

Thanks for the gumball. This sweetgum tree resides in the backyard of my parent's house in the Raleigh suburbs. This tree alone is responsible for numberous wounds caused mainly by barefoot summer evenings playing 'flashlight'. If you were a smart player, you would listen to the ouches of others as they passed underneath the boundaries of the tree and listen to little toes being impaled by the spikes of the seed pod.
We arrived in Raleigh last night. I never cease to be amazed at how many stores are necessary to please the shopping public. We ventured to the Triangle Square Mall and was basically overwhelmed by the number of people and the choices surrounding us. My teenage children love to ride the escalators. We don't have any moving stairs in Boone. I try to temper the display of their naivete so that they don't draw long stares from the big city dwellers. I laugh when they go into teenage like stores with children their age. They stare long and hard trying to see if they somehow 'fit in'. Nobody fits in at that age so of course, they do. At least they aren't wearing their overalls and never even considered it. Their dress is much more conservative and tasteful ( my opinion ) but that has more to do with dear hubby and I insisting upon a certain amount of decorum. I ain't raisin' no Daisy Maes. Everyday life is so different here. The weather is fantastic, but no one is playing outside.