At last posting, I was living in Jackson, Mississippi, actively adopting a culture very different from my family's. While that was no doubt a stressful thing to my parents, I adapted well and was actually enjoying myself. Normalcy is a strange thing, it tends to happen pretty quickly no matter where you are. What some would describe as evolutionary in nature, I feel is really just a mechanism that God has designed into us that makes it comparatively easy to adapt.
My father was spending far too many hours traveling the state with his job, and my parents felt that I was getting to an age where it was beneficial to have him around the house a bit more, so in a quest for a more stable schedule, he took a plant job in Rochester, Minnesota. Jobs come when they do, and this one came in February...a great time to move north. So at age 14, we packed up and moved to the great white north.
Rochester is an interesting phenomenon, and about as far away from Jackson as you can get climatically, demographically, and culturally. The two primary employers in Rochester were IBM and the Mayo Clinic; this place was chock full of smart people....Jackson, well, no so much. There were more blond-haired people with funny last names than I knew existed on the planet. And then there was me.
Think of it...dark haired, dark eyed kid from Mississippi, with a very strong accent that undoubtedly carried a touch of the culture that I spent most of my time in. As you can imagine, I didn't fit in very well in the 'polar-bear-eating-a-mayo-sandwich-in-a-snow-storm' whiteness that was Minnesota. Of course it was made all the worse by my arrival in a K-Mart snorkel parka and zip-up rubber galoshes. It was winter there, and the Southern boy had no clue how to dress or talk.
By the 8th grade, kids have elevated meanness to an art form. I was an easy target. Life was far harder there than it ever was in an inter-city black school. Hard to believe, but true. The odd thing was that was just about the closest I had ever come to being a minority, and in a small way, I learned what it was like to be different. It wasn't physical, I don't think I was ever in a fight...well, almost...but no, never. Instead, it was psychological abuse. Dark hair and eyes made you ethnically different than the Scandinavians and Poles, and a southern accent made you of questionable intellect. So, it was open season on the dumb southern kid. Great fun.
While I couldn't change my appearance, I could change my accent and wardrobe. I practiced hard to lose the accent, and to adopt a very Minnesotan look and sound. Eventually, it all calmed down and I greatly enjoyed my time there. High school. Drivers license. First date. First girlfriend. All that adolescent stuff. Then once again, as was becoming the norm for me, more upheaval. After 3 1/2 years, at the end of my junior year in high school, we moved back south.
The move this time was essentially back home. I had never lived in Tennessee, but my parents were both from Knoxville. Our new home here was beautiful; nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians. Wonderful place. Folks are a bit hillbilly, but they are real. It's a conservative place, and a great place to raise kids. I would far rather be around simple people with values like mine, than sophisticates with contrary viewpoints. It was here that I met my wife, here that I started my business, here that we have raised three kids, and here that we still reside. Finally, a home.
So what did I learn from all of the moving? Countless things I'm sure, but one of the biggest was the sense of being an outsider. As a white man, I cannot really know what it is like to face racial prejudice. I have, however, learned what it feels like to be judged on something other than the content of my character, and from that I have learned how to adapt and overcome. In a way, I think that has made me more empathetic towards those different than myself, but my experiences have made me less sympathetic to those who would seek to coddle the disadvantaged. They don't need our pity. They don't need our accommodation. They need to be allowed to struggle a bit, and then offered some grace, and then allowed to struggle some more. I can give you a hand...no, I WANT to give you a hand...but in the end, you have to climb out of your own ditch. Only then will you gain the strength to survive, and even to thrive, when the next challenge comes...
...and it will.
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