Cliche? Probably.

Sometimes the cliché small town stories actually happen. You know, the ones I’m talking about, those cheesy feel-good anecdotes people always spout off when talking about why they hate big cities and why they moved to a small place like Sackville.
Let’s put this story in context first. I’m currently at Bridge Street Café, the one coffee shop in town. It’s about 8:00 PM on Thursday evening which means its Open Mic Night. I came down to hang out with Od, my music-loving Syrian mentee. We were matched up through the mentorship program with the International Centre and he invited me down to listen to him play some music. (Side note: no big deal, but he’s a bit of a rock star back in Syria. We’re going to go sand skiing. Again, no big deal.)
Anyways, he normally plays with these two middle-aged guys and while he was hustling to cart his equipment over, they started up with a few tunes. I was reading a book at first so the music was pretty much just in the background at the beginning. When Od got back, I put the book away and just focused on the music.
That’s when it happened. Something about the combination of the lyrics and the interplay of the guitar and bass, sitting in Bridge Street with the funky décor and the smell of coffee and baked treats, and the scene playing out around me just hit me. People had slowly trickled in and were sitting around like me, just taking in the music while sipping on their drinks. Outside, the Vogue Cinema’s lights were flashing as the movie theater attendant used a long pole to pull down the letters advertising the night’s feature and putting up the Friday night feature. Individually, these all would have just been tiny, probably insignificant details, but the combo was a big wallop of small town living.
Why do I love Sackville? Moments like this.
(To increase the coolness and/or coriness of this post, yes, I did write it out on napkins. Whatever. I’m awesome.)