When I was a kid growing up in Petal, Mississippi, I dreamed of leaving my hometown and moving to the big city. All that dreaming eventually led me to Washington, D.C., but in the years since I’ve been away, my fondness for small town living has grown as I’ve realized it actually comes with quite a few advantages.

Here are five of my favorite benefits:

1. Politeness is expected. I worked in this office in Washington where we had a meeting to discuss how we could all be friendlier to one another. My coworkers offered a number of suggestions, including the novel idea of greeting each other in the hallway. I appreciated the sentiment, but I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. Where I’m from, people wave at strangers in traffic, speak to cashiers, and stop to help other people fix flat tires. Basically, people are generally expected to “act pretty,” as they say back home, and it creates a cultural norm of politeness that you don’t see in the big city.
2. Misbehaving is risky. In small towns, there’s accountability for bad behavior, whether you want it or not. If you decide to blare your horn in traffic, the people around you will probably recognize your car. If you cheat on your spouse, everyone will know about it. Small towns force you to operate at a base level of personal integrity, and when you choose to do otherwise, you run a very real risk of becoming infamous for it.