Of all the burning issues to flame through Decatur, the school bell schedule is the one I personally could not care less about. I know that this betrays my woefully Allisoncentric view of the world. But perhaps I am slightly redeemed by the fact that I have tried — really tried — to listen to a few of the fellow dwellers in my corner of the city wax indignant on all sides of the matter, because I know the issue is very important to them.

It just isn’t to me. I really have tried to listen, but I confess most of what I’ve heard has slid off of me like slices of bologna thrown at a plate glass window.

One slice did stick, however. It’s a refrain that comes around just about every time we have a burning issue, as regular as a chorus in a folk song. It goes a little something like this:

“We’ve been here [random number] years, and things just aren’t the way they used to be. These people who have not lived here as long as we have don’t really belong here. They aren’t ‘Decatur.’ They don’t understand how we do things here.”

I think that “Old Decatur/New Decatur” is a false, oversimplifying dichotomy. It doesn’t account for many other kinds of differences and divisions in our midst that are far more real.

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