This week’s Friday Five questions are about home and travel. They ask, if you lived anywhere else but your hometown, where would it be? This caused me to ponder why I still live where I was born.

I grew up thinking that just because you were born somewhere, wasn’t a good enough reason to simply stay there. Doing so would be like dumbly accepting the blind luck of the draw, and admitting that you don’t really control your fate.

I finally did move to Sweden, my personal promised land, and stayed there a while. What made me return was the strangest thing.

One night, about two weeks before coming to Canada for the holidays, I was reading the online version of the Montreal Mirror. It was the issue with the results their Best of Montreal poll, and one of the categories was Best Montreal Freak. They listed the Vietnam veteran in Guy metro station, the Superman guy in NDG, the now white-haired guy in front of Ogilvy’s, and so on.

Of course, after months abroad, I hadn’t thought of those guys in ages. But I knew all of them, and nothing had ever made me feel more like a true Montrealer than that; only a Montrealer would.

When I came home for the holidays two weeks later, I had brought all my stuff. Having a cup of joe with Steph at the Second Cup on Ste-Catherine was bliss; watching Don Cherry bitch on the CBC bordered on rapture.

Home is where your personal freaks are.