Will Crandall

            To be honest, at the time I thought I was always going to live in Franklin County. The smell of farms, land as far as the eye can see, it was home. Moving never crossed my mind, until the end of 2010. I loved it in Rocky Mount, back then I was fine growing up there. In Rocky Mount we were in our own world. It was very different from Roanoke. In Rocky Mount if you see a tractor driving on the street it’s just normal, but that’s certainly not the case in Roanoke. I honestly imagined people in Roanoke as stuck up, and arrogant. I never thought I was going to move, and I really didn’t want to, but little did I know it would change my life for the better.

            One day when I was in the fourth grade, my parents were being really nice, like unusually nice. They said we were going out to eat, and when we got to the restaurant they said “we won’t be living in Rocky Mount next year.” I thought of my friends, and that I’d never see them, and I thought of living in a different house. I didn’t want to believe it. Even though we were only 30 minutes away from Roanoke, it seemed like we were moving across the globe. All of my friends were in Rocky Mount, and I didn’t know anyone in Roanoke. I had gone to the same school for my whole life, and having to switch schools and make new friends seemed dreadful.

            My house in Rocky Mount was practically a mansion, a beautiful brick house, with marble floors, countless bedrooms and bathrooms, and more land than we could ever use. The house we were going to be moving to in Roanoke was half the size and there was about a fifth of the land on the property. So that just made matters worse. As you could probably imagine I gave my parents a really hard time about it, yelling, arguing, and throwing a fit. I did everything I could to try to convince them to stay in Rocky Mount, I even said “I’ll get straight A’s all throughout school, and I’ll never get in trouble!” But their decision was final.

           

            Rocky Mount, Virginia is the most backwards town in America. I didn’t really realize how bad Rocky Mount was until I got to Roanoke. There are a lot of nice people in Rocky Mount, but there are more rude people than there are nice. It’s like people in Rocky Mount don’t realize it’s the 21st century, they do everything so old-fashioned. Moving out of Rocky Mount really changed my life because I know people my age in Franklin County that do drugs, drink, or have been arrested, and that very easily could’ve been me.

We pulled up to the house and it was in a big neighborhood, which the house I lived in, in Rocky Mount was really private so I was actually excited to finally have some neighbors. We finally got settled in and I started to enjoy living where there was actually stuff to do, unlike Rocky Mount. I started to get to know my neighbors better and there were like ten kids my age in the neighborhood. I started to become good friends with most of them, we were hanging out almost every night, hanging out in my cul-de-sac, playing flash light tag, cops and robbers, or something else of that nature.  I started too really like living in Roanoke, and I started to miss Rocky Mount less.

            I honestly thought I was going to hate living in Roanoke, but it’s actually so much better than living in Rocky Mount. Hidden Valley is way better than the school I went to in Rocky Mount, and I’m so glad we decided to move here because I’ve met friends that I’ll be friends with my whole life, and I’ve learned things that I’ll never forget.