My Experience

I've been thinking of so many ways to start this dialog, but what better way than with personal experience, for what more do I really know, than what I have seen, felt, and heard?

Background: I'm the oldest of a family of two, my brother and I grew up in a small farming town in NW Washington State, one of those towns you see on TV where the kids ride their bikes, and everything is closed on Sunday. We used to joke that we were the only town in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most churches per capita. I'm not sure if it was true but it was always funny to us. We were also a border town, so when people would drive through looking for an open store, or gas station we would laugh, and say.... It's Sunday! Like that was the only answer that they needed. Don't ask why we were talking to strangers, like I said it was like one of those sleepy little towns that you think only survived in peoples memories or on Nick at Nite. Did I mention it had a Dutch Theme, with fake facades an all? Anyways, I start here because the more I contemplate my viewpoints on health matters, the more I realize that I have always been independent, wanting to find things out for myself, never quite fitting into the mold of what I should be doing. Lynden www.Lyndenwa.org (my hometown) must have played a role in this, because here everything from the height of your grass, to when you would be able to eat out or fill your tank was regulated by the community norm. Sometimes what is "normal" is not always what is good for you. Take Lynden, it all but shuttered when the tourists stopped coming, and the business's couldn't sustain with the blue laws forcing their hands. What was normal and worked for so many years had to change. Were the old conventions wrong? Or were they right and everything else was wrong? I don't know, but it changed, and Lynden is still around, vibrant, with manicured lawns, windmills, and Dutch facades, and here I am remembering the good old days when Sunday's were quiet, and kids rode their bikes in the middle of the road, and talked to strangers.