I'll never forget the first time I ever heard anyone call State College rural.
Growing up in a town of less than 400 people -- the size of a lot of classes at University Park -- the concept made about as much sense as if Charlton Heston was the guest of honor at Bill Clinton's library dedication.
Rural isn't a town where nearly 20,000 people per square mile live.
It isn't a town that needs public transportation within the city limits.
And rural definitely doesn't have a museum, multiple movie complexes within quick driving distance, or a bar or dance club on nearly every street corner.
Rural is a town where the only viable business is a lawn tractor dealership, and you need to drive five miles just to get gas.
The local paper only comes out once a week, but can still barely fill a news hole the size of the Collegian's while covering a geographic area about the size of the CDT's.
And above all, rural is when you don't really even associate yourself with coming from a town at all.
Back home, you're from the "valley," a random conglomeration of little towns -- or more like housing clusters with a church -- that just happen to fall between two mountains and a river. And just trust me, there isn't much there at all.
You need to drive 30-plus miles to find a Wal-Mart. Enough said.
So, to amuse yourself in the valley, you have two options.
One is to drive to 50 minutes to Harrisburg or 30 minutes to Selinsgrove -- another town few outside the greater Susquehanna Valley have ever heard of -- and do whatever you do in State College if you aren't old enough to drink at the bars. But hell, who knows what that is?
The other option is to stay within the confines of the ridge-and-valley hideaway. Who doesn't love a party in the middle of the woods or a cornfield?
At least you have a chance to lose the cops on foot if it gets busted.
Surprisingly, though, we do have our own version of frat houses.
They are hunting camps that smell like bar rooms, complete with kegs and smelly people. Seeing how drunk you can get the night before a hunting trip and still make it into the woods the next morning is a fall weekend ritual.
Although in hindsight, mixing alcohol and firearms in a 24-hour time period is not the best idea in the world.
And, of course, who could forget massive convoys of cars driving around back roads, all drivers and passengers looking for the greatest prize of any small town Saturday night: a possum?
For all the spell-checkers out there, I know I missed a letter.
But in the valley, an opossum is just a possum.
Live with it.
And possums are great fun to chase through fields.
Everyone should try it at some point to be a well-rounded human being.
So with all of that being said, coming to State College my freshman year was a little bit of a culture shock.
I wasn't allowed to keep a firearm in my possession while living in the dorms, which I viewed as a serious violation of my basic human rights.
And partying in houses or apartments was the most uncomfortable situation in the world. How stupid could people be? That's how you got busted back home. Damn city.
But in the past year, I've changed a lot. State College is now what I consider home as much as the valley, and my best friends are now the kind of people that hear my growing up stories and look at me like I have bugs coming out of my ears.
And I'm even to the point now where State College does seem kind of small. The big plans I now have that my closest friends here have encouraged me to
pursue will be the future course of my life. But I'll never be able to forget the valley, I'll never forget what rural really means.
So if you're coming back to Penn State from a summer at some hot-shot internship or job in Manhattan or D.C., and the smell of manure by the stadium is enough to make your skin melt off, just remember that it could be much, much worse.
State College is not rural. Not even close.
