Sarah Widdop
Widdop
AP Lang and Comp
6 Sept 2013
Worldly or Naïve?
"So is Iceland covered completely in ice?" My stateside friends would ask me when I was in Washington for the summer.
"No but it gets really windy and cold in the winter. Once, my mom was walking me to the bus and it was so windy I blew into our fence. Every time I would try to peel myself off the fence, another gust would come and I'd be back on the fence."
"Wow, you're so worldly."
"So do you live in a hut in Bermuda? Do you have running water and electricity? Do people wear clothes?" My stateside friends would ask when I was in Washington for the summer. Sheesh, I thought, do these kids ever get out?
"No but we do have rocks to jump off of in front of our house. And we live next to a bay and can see sea turtles when the tide is low."
"Wow, you're so worldly."
"Do you even go to school, or do you just travel around?" My friends stateside friends would ask me when I was in Washington for the summer. Holy moly, do these kids ever watch the news?
"Yeah, we go to a DODDS school with other military kids. We do get to travel a lot. This year I went to New York with the business club and Whales with my science class." I didn't add that this was also the first time in my life that I'd filled all the pages in my passport before it expired. By now, I wondered if my friends had ever had passports.
"Your parents live in Cuba? Are they communist?" My stateside friends would ask as we packed our bags for college.
"No, they live on the Navy base, Guantanamo Bay. They can't actually go into Cuba, they are stuck on the base and it is kind of boring."
"Oooh, sounds worldly."
I didn't consider myself worldly but I sure had heard this statement a lot. Worldly? I was a white kids with a sister and two married parents. My dad was a high school teacher who coached my basketball team. Worldly people had fathers who studied mushrooms on the Galapagos. My mom was a housewife and made my lunch every day of my school career. Worldly people didn't have housewife mothers. I liked McDonalds and going to the mall when I went to the states. Worldly people ate couscous and got their clothes from a woman in the mountains of India. I wore Keds. Worldly people wore Birkenstocks. Regardless, I took the description and applied it to my life as I left high school and embarked on the college experience. I was accepted to WSU. I had never been there but figured it was a good place as it had a vet program (my interest at the time). Worldly people signed up for adventures to new places and attending WSU was just another adventure. Worldly people let their parents drop them off in the middle of wheat fields at schools with 30,000 students. Worldly people didn't care if they didn't know a soul.
As I settled into life as an American student in an American town, I seriously started to doubt my worldliness. Sure, I knew how to navigate nearly every airport in Europe and the US, but I had no idea what a Homecoming Weekend was. My initial thought was, "Do I need to go home? Is this a celebration about going home?" This worried me as my parents were living in Panama and going home was not an option. I kept quiet and followed my friends actions; I purchased a Coug sweatshirt. I quickly learned to hide my naivety but I couldn't get over how my "worldly" life had not prepared me for being an American kid.
I spent the first few months eating breakfast and lunch alone in the Rotunda (Seriously? Could no one think of a more appropriate and inspirational name for a dining hall? Sure, we all got a bit more rotund our freshmen year, but no need to highlight that this was the place to do so.) In my previous "worldly" life, I would have joined others at a table. But here, I wasn't so sure. The Asians sat together. The black kids sat together. The kids who wore cowboy boots and Wranglers sat together. The frat boys sat together. The kids who all went to Monroe High School sat together. The kids from Stadium High School did the same. I didn't see a table for "worldly" people. I was confused. In high school, there were only 11 of us in my class, we were the clique and we didn't look alike, act a like or wear the same clothes. We were not the same color. But here there seemed to be so many separate groups I didn't know what to choose and who would accept me.
When spring break came around, I felt equally as naïve. My new found friends were going to places like Stevens, Chelan, even Disneyland (for like the 5th time and they were only going because their younger sibling had yet to go). I had not been skiing, had to look up Chelan on a map and my parents had neglected to take me to Disneyland. We did get to go to England three Christmas's in a row but my new found college friends did not seem concerned with going to England. I didn't know if my worldly self was going to make it in this world and I felt very left out of life. I wondered if my parents had purposely neglected to allow me to have these experiences. Why had no one told me about vacations to Mexico and fake ID's? We didn't need fake ID's as the drinking age in Bermuda was 18.
Hindsight does a lot for one. I look back on who I was as I entered college and I do see myself as naïve. I sure did miss out on the American high school experience and I sure did get a worldly experience and one can't have both before they are 18.