There isn’t a week that goes by where someone doesn’t ask “So, where are you from?” I always say “pick a state” – because there isn’t really a good answer .
I’ve lived in a lot of states, some by my own design but most because I grew up in a military household. Let me tell you, at no point in time during a military upbringing do you get to suggest where we move next.
Nope. That’s someone else’s job.
So culturally I’m not really from anywhere. Early on, like before I was in 2nd grade, I’d already lived in Wyoming, Ohio, Florida, Texas and Washington state. So I can’t really claim to be a Texan – or a Buckeye.
Then through my school years I lived in Alaska, New Hampshire and Nebraska. So I can’t really say I’m a lifelong Celtics fan, nor can I claim to be a Husker.
But it didn’t stop there. Since high school I’ve lived in Romania, Colorado, Illinois, Arizona and now my second town in Tennessee. At no point in those moves did some “culture” stick. No discernable accent. No regional food preferences. . . it’s like I belong to some Nomadic diaspora to which there is no Facebook fan page.
The only time this “lack of cultural identity” has hurt me was back in high school. I was trying to win a “scholarship” to study in Japan for a semester, like a sister-city exchange program.
My application got selected as a finalist, and the final acceptance hurdle was a trip out to Grand Island, Nebraska for a formal interview. It was clear, immediately, that I was different from the6 or 7 other finalists.
I didn’t own cattle. My family hadn’t lived there for generations, and I wasn’t “corn fed” from birth. I did OK in the interview, but one of the qualifications they spoke about was choosing someone who was a good representative of the state.
That, I was not. So I, didn’t win.
Other than that, my “cultural disability” has never really come into play. On the flip side, people now ask me about places all the time. And on occasion, I’ve got to catch people lying about having visited a place (No, you didn’t take a boat ride under the Eiffel Tower).
So my cultural heritage is “domestic nomad”, with a little patriotism mixed in. Nevertheless, I don’t regret any of it. It’s my life. One thing I can always guarantee – I’m always looking for the next place.
And now that I’m no longer “growing up military”, I get to choose where.







