Reporter’s Notebook: “KC Big Small Town”

By JEN CHEN

The first time I realized that KC is a big small town was when I tried to crash a party in Prairie Village. As I documented in this Night Ranger column, I was infiltrating the party when I realized that (a) I knew the host; and (b) I had already been invited. What’s weird is that I knew only a few people who lived in PV at the time, so I’m still amazed that of all the houses in the area, I ended up at the one where I knew the owner.

Since then, I’ve collected stories about the random ways in which Kansas Citians are connected. I’ve wanted to write this “Big Small Town” story for a while, but I’ve had trouble approaching such a nebulous subject. I didn’t want the story to consist solely of anecdotes about how someone knows so-and-so, who’s friends with the brother of such-and-such. So I tried to figure out why this happens. I came up with a theory on how we interact; I thought that most Kansas Citians (especially those who grew up here) could be classified in four ways: