Just Outside Philly

Something I’ve been fascinated by lately is how so many people either assume you know everything they know OR that you know nothing.

Examples of the first would be, like, an old colleague of mine who would randomly drop niche book titles or indie artists and expect everyone to be on her taste wavelength (and truly, this wasn’t in the annoying hipster, I’m-going-to-make-you-ask-me-who-that-is-so-I-can-act-more-in-the-know way — she would be truly flummoxed when the entire office, didn’t for example, know who the local morning NPR anchor was) or I’m thinking of a date I went on semi-recently who’d be like, “Well, you know Sharon who’s always at the Yellow Mug,” and it’d be like, no, I don’t know Sharon, and I don’t even know where the Yellow Mug is (though Google tells me it’s about a ten-minute ride north of Asheville in Weaverville).

An example of the other one — the people who float through the world thinking they’re the main character in their story (the kids these days call this “main character syndrome, FYI), and thus no one would have a similar experience and knowledge base as them — would be the gentleman I sat next to on a flight from Greenville, South Carolina to Philadelphia a couple of years back.

I was flying back home for my grandmother’s funeral. The goal was to land in Philly, have my brother pick me up, and drive back to Northeast PA with him. The gentleman I ended up sharing a seat with — all decked out in Phillies gear, by the way — was returning home from a bachelor party. I know this because he basically talked at me from the second I sat down to midway through our flight.

“You from Philly? Going home?” he finally asked me, towards the end of our conversation.

I got out, “Not from Philly,” — the rest of my sentence would’ve been something along the lines of, “but I’m from Pennsylvania and going home,” — before he interrupted to tell me what an awesome city Philly was. He told me it’s one of the most historic cities in the country and that the club scene there is unrivaled. Turns out, he’s a bit of a regular on the club circuit. On all the VIP lists, bouncers know his name — my man has never met a nightlife line he couldn’t cut!

At one point, when he had to stop and take a breath, I was able to get in, “What part of Philly do you live in?”

“Well, I’m actually not in the city limits, I’m a JOP guy.” JOP is “just outside Philly,” which I knew, but he quickly explained to me.

“Where outside?” I asked. I would’ve added, “My brother and several of my best friends are in the Philly burbs,” but he also didn’t give me the chance.

“Allentown,” he said. “Quick train ride to all the best clubs. I’m downtown all the time. I should move to Center City, but I love the peace of the suburbs.”

And here, reader, is where I need to not do what these people I’m fascinated by do, and assume you know anything about Allentown, Pennsylvania (aside from, of course, that it inspired a Billy-Joel banger, which I feel comfortable assuming is common knowledge).

Allentown is not a suburb. It’s a city of 126,000 people and the third-largest in PA after Philly and Pittsburgh. It has its own suburban sprawl.

It’s also not just outside Philadelphia. It’s 65 miles away and at least an hour’s drive. And you can’t take a train from Philly to Allentown. The furthest north the regional rail goes is Doylestown, 30 miles south of Allentown.

I almost asked what the train station in Allentown was like, just to be an ass (and see how far into this lie he’d go), but I didn’t. Instead, I quickly interjected, “Oh, cool, I’ll be passing through Allentown myself later — I’m driving from Philly to the Scranton area later; that’s where I grew up.”

“Oh,” he said. “I assumed you were from South Carolina.”

“I live in North Carolina,” I told him. “Asheville, but fly out of Greenville sometimes. I grew up in PA, though. My sister lived in Center City Philly for years. My brother lives in West Chester, and one of my best friends is in Conshohocken.”

And that, readers, is where our conversation reached its natural conclusion. Neither of us said anything after that. After a minute or two, I picked up the book I hadn’t had a chance to open, and he moved his Beats by Dre from his neck to his ears.

#SundayStory is a weekly recurring series I started this past spring on my Instagram account. It started as a challenge for me to share a story a week, and as a small attempt to interject into the feed with something other than self-promotion or marketing disguised as content. I’ve also decided to start sharing it here, on Medium.