On becoming a city mouse

What was that story? City Mouse and Country Mouse? It was a story in our readers when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. I do not remember how the story worked out, but I suppose in the tradition of isolationism that was rampant in our school textbooks in that post-WW2 era, the Country Mouse was the hero in the end. However, I remember the illustrations more than the details of the story which, it seems, goes back to Aesop's Fables of the Country Mouse and the Town Mouse. I cannot blame the missionary generation textbooks writers is they inserted that for the boomer children of the GI-generation heroes who were doing everything to push America and the world into a new prosperity. Like I say, only the illustrations stand out in my memory. 

With that I suppose that after my early years in suburban, not-too-special, incredibly American-Pie-Normal Bellflower, where life was a cross between Leave-it-to-Beaver suburbia and Mayberry back-woods (they shot the film Grease in Bellflower because the producers thought it had preserved all the charm of the 1930s) -- after all that, and schooling in rural Watsonville California and Sussex County NJ, I've spent my adult years mainly in cities: Edmonton (northern most capital city in North America), Torino (launching pad for the Italian Risorgimento and first capital of the Kingdom of Italy), San Francisco, Berkeley and now Roma. I've actually found that this has allowed me to live a more simple lifestyle for everything is in walking distance, and the things that are not are places I can reach by public transit. During 2013 I drove maybe 8 times all together, but I am not uncomfortable in big crowds and I have learned to pace myself when I have to move about in public circumstances.

So have I become the City Mouse? I hope that I have not become arrogant and impractical as the City Mouse did, but I have always feared that I have always been inclined to prideful stupidity (certainly, that is what my novice director used to tell me week after week: "It's your pride, Ernie, its your pride"… he thought I was named Ernie, that's another story). If nothing else, being a city mouse has forced me to walk more, spend less, and live in small spaces, count my pennies (or centesimi) to make ends meet -- something that would be impossible today in the rural or suburban areas of a post-modern world. 

Is this a benefit?