If what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas...
How the hell did I end up in Georgia?
For those of you who don't know, your favorite geek was born in Sin City. No I'm not the product of a crazy night of gambling, free drinks, and all you can eat shrimp for $2.99. My parents lived in Las Vegas and I'm an "accident." My dad worked the midnight shift as an airline mechanic. I'm the result of a couple that was finding ways to entertain themselves while waiting for a labor strike to end. Dad likes to remind me that my berth wasn't covered by insurance because he wasn't technically working when I was conceived. Sadly, for my parents, the boredom continued after the strike and their marriage ended while I was little more than a toddler. Mom packed up myself and my older brother D and we found ourselves in the City of Angels. I did most of my growing up in LA with a brief small town stint in Indiana. My mom remarried and had two more boys. I was a sophomore in High School when LA became financially too much for mom to handle. So again I was packed in a car and driven to Jacksonville Florida where I got my first taste of the South. It was culture shock to say the least.
I still remember my first day of high school. My first class was a biology lab. The teacher introduced me and told everyone that I had moved there from LA. This instantly made me popular in the class. After roll was called and the lab experiments began, I was swarmed by every girl in the room. Popularity wasn't something I was used to. In LA I was one of the dregs of scholastic society barely worthy of acknowledgement. I was one of the poor kids that lived on the wrong side of the boulevard (in LA the middle class is poor to the insanely rich). I was completely out of my element in my first social engagement as a Floridian. But what really threw me off was not the discomfort of being in a new situation. Not that at all. It was the first question out of the first girl who talked to me. She asked me, "What church do you go to?" Right then and there I knew I wanted to go back west. Ever since that day I've felt out of place.
My personality just doesn't mesh with southern culture.
For those of you who don't know, your favorite geek was born in Sin City. No I'm not the product of a crazy night of gambling, free drinks, and all you can eat shrimp for $2.99. My parents lived in Las Vegas and I'm an "accident." My dad worked the midnight shift as an airline mechanic. I'm the result of a couple that was finding ways to entertain themselves while waiting for a labor strike to end. Dad likes to remind me that my berth wasn't covered by insurance because he wasn't technically working when I was conceived. Sadly, for my parents, the boredom continued after the strike and their marriage ended while I was little more than a toddler. Mom packed up myself and my older brother D and we found ourselves in the City of Angels. I did most of my growing up in LA with a brief small town stint in Indiana. My mom remarried and had two more boys. I was a sophomore in High School when LA became financially too much for mom to handle. So again I was packed in a car and driven to Jacksonville Florida where I got my first taste of the South. It was culture shock to say the least.
I still remember my first day of high school. My first class was a biology lab. The teacher introduced me and told everyone that I had moved there from LA. This instantly made me popular in the class. After roll was called and the lab experiments began, I was swarmed by every girl in the room. Popularity wasn't something I was used to. In LA I was one of the dregs of scholastic society barely worthy of acknowledgement. I was one of the poor kids that lived on the wrong side of the boulevard (in LA the middle class is poor to the insanely rich). I was completely out of my element in my first social engagement as a Floridian. But what really threw me off was not the discomfort of being in a new situation. Not that at all. It was the first question out of the first girl who talked to me. She asked me, "What church do you go to?" Right then and there I knew I wanted to go back west. Ever since that day I've felt out of place.
My personality just doesn't mesh with southern culture.
posted by Glenn at 7:51 AM
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