I moved to Wichita at the age of 12 from a very tiny town in Nebraska. I mean tiny. My school had two classrooms and each room had three grades mixed together being taught by one teacher. The summer after sixth grade we moved to Wichita where I would soon be starting my first year of junior high (yes, we had junior high then instead of middle school) in a class of 500 rather than a class of 5 like I was used to.
For me, Wichita was a big city. For many the mention of anywhere in Kansas brings only one thought to mind... The Wizard of Oz. The "big" city I was suddenly a part of did not remind me of that dusty Kansas farm in the movie at all. For me it was more like the Emerald City.
My first week in school my history teacher began our lessons with the history of Kansas. I can't say I really remember much about it. There was one thing he said that has stuck with me all these years though. He mentioned that one of the slogans Kansas had coined for itself was "The Land of Ahs."
Having come from my tiny little town (population 220) to this city of over 300,000 I was truly in awe of it. Now, here I am twenty five years later raising three kids in the Land of Ahs.
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