A Brief History of Me

I have to start my blog with an disclaimer,  not for what I'm going to say, but for how I'm going to say it.  For me to properly illustrate one of the influences in my life growing up I'm going to have to use language that some might find offensive.  I understand how offensive this term can be but I view terms like this as part of history.  Not just my history, but the shared history of how cultures have struggled with coming together in this country.  I would never use it with the intent to cause injury.  That being said, I'll begin. 

           My life started and for the first 22 years was completely centered in Springfield, Oregon.  I was born at McKenzie-Willamette hospital December 10^th, 1975.  My parents had bought their house in Springfield a few years before I was born and they still live in that house today.  Springfield is largely the blue collar, conservative step-brother of Eugene which is much more diverse politically and economically.  My parents, for reasons that I’ve never really understood, only ever took us to Eugene to go to REI or to the mall.  I think my parents were afraid of the cultural mix, of the “hippies”.  Any cultural or ethnic diversity that would have been available to me through Eugene was left untapped.

My father has worked for the same plywood mill in Springfield since before I was born.  My mother works for an insurance agency in a middle management role.  She has also never "switched" jobs though the company that she started working for has been bought and her role has changed as the companies have evolved.  I have never encountered anyone who has had a more stable childhood with respect to moving and parental jobs.

I am the oldest son of three sons.  My brothers are 3yrs and 4.5yrs younger than I am.  It's been said that I spoiled my parents by being an unusually easy child to raise and that they weren't prepared when my brother's were born.  Once I was old enough I was the “babysitter”.  My parents just didn’t make enough money to hire one easily so I had to take on some extra responsibility early. 

Religion, in my past, needs to be addressed.  I was raised Catholic and spent the first 7 years of my education in private Catholic schools.  I even had a nun as a teacher for third grade.  I was an alter server and was pulled out of class regularly in grade school for masses and funerals.  I no longer consider myself Catholic, or even particularly religious, but Catholic values have had a very large effect on my value system today. 

Growing up in the town and going to the schools I did, my multicultural exposure was very minimal.  At the private grade school I attended, there was only one student that wasn’t white.  Through 5^th grade, the socio-economic status of the people I was with was also very similar.  We were all lower-middle class.  During 6^th grade I attended a very rich private school and was “the poor kid”.  This was not a pleasant experience and I was very much the outsider.  My memory is that every other student in my class had a lawyer, a doctor, or a dentist as one of their parents.  It took me half of the school year to break down the barriers between me and the other students.  This was the only time in my life that I had not been readily accepted into my peer group.  It was not an experience that I would like to repeat.

Even when I began to attend public school in 7^th grade, there wasn’t any more racial diversity.  I can’t remember anyone in my classes in middle school that was not white.  High school was a little more diverse, but not by much.  There was a small group of Hispanic kids but they formed their own little clique.  There was also a family of African-American boys, but I didn’t know them well.  I played football with Germaine but he ran with a very different crowd than I did.  We got along, but I wouldn’t call him a friend.

With that kind of history, I obviously grew up on the white kid side of the fence.  I remember complaining with my friends in high school while we were looking for scholarships to go to college that it wasn’t fair.  There were hundreds of scholarships for people of different races but there seemed to be few scholarships for those of us who were not minorities.  My parents, and the parents of my friends, made just enough money to mess up our financial aid but not enough to help with tuition in any meaningful fashion. 

My mother’s father was a racist.  We lived fairly close to my grandparents and we saw them pretty often.  I have a vivid memory of my grandfather asking one of my cousins “How’s your nigger girlfriend?”.  The strangest thing about it was that he said it with so little feeling.  It was just how someone with darker skin was described.  My cousin took it in stride, by the way.  We were used to grandpa.

College for me was a blur.  I competed in Track & Field at the University of Oregon.  I threw shotput, discus, and hammer.  Track & Field is a very divided sport which, for the most part, the throwers hang out with the throwers, the sprinters with sprinters, and so on.  On top of that, I worked all the way through college, in the evenings and on weekends, while carrying a full time load so I simply didn’t have a lot of time to socialize and try to break down those barriers.

Somehow, I came out of this white, blue collar, racist influenced childhood very accepting of other cultures.  I think it was mostly the “negative” response factor.  I did NOT want to be like my grandfather.  I did not want to be afraid of other cultures.  I did not want to exclude people as I was excluded that one year in school.