I've mentioned before the quirks of being one of the only different families in my area. Unless we had a sudden influx of adoptive families that have snuck into Bumblyburg in the middle of the night we have five families here that have adopted internationally. There are two from Ethiopia, two from Haiti, counting us, and our dentist has a daughter adopted from Guatemala. I can't speak for everyone else, but I have noticed that people seem to assume that we are A. independently wealthy, and B. very global and upscale. I'm sure people assume this more for us, because our boys' had just came home when we moved here, so no one already knew our story before hand. In the teeny town where we moved from, everyone knew us and followed our process, so we really didn't stick out as much as we do here.
I choose to let people think what they want, because the irony makes me laugh, and no matter how many times I tell people that I'm just a regular person from a little town an hour and a half down the road, people still don't seem to get it. Sure, I have a Thule topper on my car that's not a mini-van, which automatically gives me a global hippie look. Yeah, I can tell someone to, "go to hell" in four languages, but I try not to do that, or at least too often. I even worked as a translator one summer for migrant health services in the exotic location of Wyoming, so if you ever need a Spanish Pap Smear, I can help. But when I have a mom telling me just how difficult it was to navigate the airport in Hungary with her children, I can't relate. Sure I struggle to get hungry kids through Costco, but I don't think its the same.
So in an effort to make a point, I would like to remind everybody that I'm content in who I am. I am not the well traveled urban hipster, but actually a recovered redneck. Growing up, friends always told me, that the jokes were made about my family. They weren't that far off. Sure I have my hippie side of peace, love and tolerance, but I have also unwillingly taken part in chicken round-ups, so I think there will always be a little redneck to me.
I'm sure someone out there is reading my blog with curiosity at the life of a recovered redneck, so I thought I'd offer a few tips to identify if you too are a recovering redneck.
1. If major shopping trips involve going to "town", a location that is measured by the time it takes to drive there, usually a half an hour to an hour and a half. "Town" has all the amenities that are necessary for life, such as Costco, Target, Craft Stores, and Wal-mart. Depending on where you live, "town" becomes a different location, but regardless "going to town" still takes an entire Saturday and a full car, hence the Thule topper, and generally grumpy parents by the time the day is over.
2. While we are on the topic of "town", you may be a recovering redneck if you remember when Wal-mart first came to "town". For the first year, you were in a euphoric, happy state and the opportunities for cheap crud that you could now purchase. We swore that K-mart would never be able to last. The process was repeated when Super Wal-mart came to "town". However it didn't take long to realize all the ills of Wal-mart and then we found Target, and went back to K-mart so we didn't have to wait 45 minutes to check out.
3. You may be a recovering redneck if you clearly remember your first escalator ride. I was in college, but I didn't ride it repeatedly, like my children do.
4. If your fine dining experiences as a child, consisted of 40 feet of food and a sign that says, "Go nuts, Buddy", you might be a recovering redneck.
5. Apparently the rest of the world has curtains for a purpose; as redneck children, we had no need. That is until we went to college. My roommate and I learned a very important lesson on the first day of college. Apparently, if you have a ground floor room and you need to change, its a good idea to close those curtains, unless you want to attract the wrong kind of element.
I could go on indefinitely about the quirks of a recovering redneck, but I wanted to point out that heading to college was very instrumental in my exit from my redneck roots. I headed out 7 hours from home, the farthest east I had ever been in my life, to the cultured world of Powell, Wyoming. I discovered escalators, air travel and embarked on my first international travel, 3 1/2 hours in Ciudad Juarez.
Twelve years later, I'm being mistaken for global hipsters. I do have multiple stamps in my passport, all from Haiti. My house is filled with Haitian art and an African basket or two, so I guess it is a far cry from the trailer with the large telephone spool table that I grew up it. Actually, everyone in my house has a passport, and we might even head up to Canada some day, its only about two hours away. Literally, I only have one non-operational vehicle and its not being used to store anything. I'm still looking for my trust fund to fund its restoration. So all that to say, feel free to humor me and assume that I'm global and upscale. It makes me laugh, and laughter is a good thing :)
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