Shrinking Former Life

I am in Detroit this weekend visiting friends. Tonight we were in my old neighborhood, the one I grew up in until I was 21. I've been there a few times over the years, but for some reason today everything looked really small. I mean everything, from my old backyard to the big haunted house around the corner, the strip mall where we had Chinese Food (if you're in town, make sure to stop at Golden Bowl on 9 and Coolidge - the veggie egg foo young rocks and if you can put up with the brash hostess/order-taker without smacking her, you've got great self-control), even the mailbox on the far corner of my old block seems capable of holding only half as many letters as it did twenty years ago.

Either my eyes have grown bigger, or the city has really shrunk. I wonder which one.