Me, me, me

Are you enjoying this drivel? Another response paper from the grad school era...


SOCIAL IDENTITY
When I start to think about that phrase, “social identity,” and apply it to myself, I think mainly of one major issue. And I’ll get to that in a bit. Taking the greater assignment as a whole, I feel like I need to squeeze a few more aspects through the funnel and see what squishes out. So let’s start, not at the beginning, but at the end. Our first question- what’s been squeezed out?


I am an amalgam of Caucasian European ethnicities. Polish, French, English-slash-Scottish, German, Dutch and there are rumors of Austrian. There’s also an element of Native American Indian in the form of Iroquois Mohawk in me that’s rather obliterated in my blond-haired, blue-eyed appearance by the strong Slavic Polish and Aryan German roots but the Native American heritage starts to become visibly apparent in my father and certainly in his mother. All that said, or, what it amounts to, is that I don’t feel a strong ethnic influence. I just consider myself a Springfield boy, an American, a suburban concoction.


How about gender? I’m a guy. Ask my wife. But I’m a sensitive one. My brain is strong in areas related to language and writing, significantly challenged in math and sciences. And that’s against traditional gender type, but it’s not unheard of. Again, gender is not a really strong component of my social identity. I could expound more and eventually cast off religious identity, class, etc. as being important factors but let us instead proceed to the real meat of the matter.


I’m shy. Bashful is the term my Dad always likes to use. I didn’t speak a word in kindergarten. Well, no, I did, once. When Mrs. Kennedy asked the class who would like to come up to the board and draw a straight line with the chalk, despite the fact that I’d never volunteered to do anything before, my hand shot up. I’d been terrified to contribute anything to the class, equally as afraid of speaking to classmates as I was to teachers. But something deep inside challenged me to do this. I could draw a straight line, couldn’t I? Meekly, I approached the chalkboard, pinched the chalk with trembling, sweaty fingers, and etched a powdery white line into the deep kelly-green slate. Whirring around, I then proudly strode back to my seat and triumphantly reclined. Then, to my horror, I gazed upon the work I left behind me on the chalkboard. The line started straight for a few inches, then gradually but unmistakably veered ever southward, like the sickening appearance of a sales graph of a company whose stock was steadily plummeting. Mrs. Kennedy softly yet patronizingly commended my efforts. Next, Suzanne P. volunteered to show the class how it’s really done, and promptly did. Many years later, I realized that a lot of my character could be, ahem, traced back to this very vector in the timeline of my life.


From then on, I withdrew into the safety of my shyness as much as possible and yet there was still this urge within that still made me raise that hand and get under those bright lights again and again. In 3rd grade, there I was, rocking out, lip-synching to an Elvis song in front of the class with slicked-backed hair and a little leather jacket for show-and-tell. 4th grade found me singing a capella duets of Beatles songs with schoolmate Ronnie D. every month or so in music class. Soon I was writing my own songs and nervously approaching talent show stages. I loved that charge of the unknown result of appearing onstage. I might fall flat on my face like I did in kindergarten but the glory of having the attention of the crowd and quite possibly wowing them was worth the risk. And here I am years later, having fully conquered stage fright when I’m on stage playing music and yet I still am a rather soft-spoken, meek, and, yes, even bashful person offstage. So perhaps the time has come to put myself on a different stage, a stage I’ve never approached before, in front of a different kind of audience and now it’s not my job just to entertain but to instruct. It’s a new concept but one with a whole other thrill involved that’s palpably emerging.