home is where...
One thing I have noticed since coming home, especially since I started working, is how while I may have lived here since I was born, I am not really from West Chester.
Yes, I have bought many of my clothes at the Exton Mall and I know the magic that is Wawa and I can watch Viva La Bam! and recognize every place they go to--but I may as well be from somewhere else.
This first became apparent when I went to see Star Wars. All the girls who were not Hot Topic nerds dressed up in full costume regalia had on a light-colored hooded sweatshirt with no zipper, often emblazoned with the name of their field hockey/basketball/lacrosse team. They had on light colored flared jeans and flip flops, with ironed hair with highlights parted down the middle. They had carefully-lined eyes with pastel eyeshadow and sparkly gloss on their lips.
Their looks seem antiquated to me, although they matched their boyfriends' baggy jeans and long shorts and hooded sweatshirts with college names on them topped off with a head of gelled hair.
I didn't go to Henderson or East and I never thought about attending West Chester University. I spent 15 years in the Quaker system, learning about India and doing yoga in second grade and not knowing a thing about Dead American White Men until seventh, except for Benjamin Franklin (from Pennsylvania), Abraham Lincoln (freed the slaves), William Penn (QUAKER), and various abolitionists. Recess was spent playing house in cemetaries divided between Hicksites and Orthodox Quakers.
During high school, I mainly socialized with people who were interested in organic farming. When we went out at night on van trips leaving from Central, we would always observe those who went to public schools and realized that if we didn't go to boarding school, we would be them and go home to our parents instead of our dorm floor, with lights out and skybeds and shiking.
So now I am among the aboriginal West Chester peoples; those who spent Friday nights at the mall and Saturday nights in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen and later, keggers in someone's house. I realize that I am as foreign as if I were from Bulgaria.
And now instead of WCU, I go to Sarah Lawrence, which is like Quaker education in a lot of ways minus the focus on pacifism and the Inner Light. People who wear what is de rigeur in the WC are considered anomalies, and sometimes others wonder what those kids are doing here.
I was really sad about leaving West Chester last summer, but now I realize that I've never actually lived there.
Yes, I have bought many of my clothes at the Exton Mall and I know the magic that is Wawa and I can watch Viva La Bam! and recognize every place they go to--but I may as well be from somewhere else.
This first became apparent when I went to see Star Wars. All the girls who were not Hot Topic nerds dressed up in full costume regalia had on a light-colored hooded sweatshirt with no zipper, often emblazoned with the name of their field hockey/basketball/lacrosse team. They had on light colored flared jeans and flip flops, with ironed hair with highlights parted down the middle. They had carefully-lined eyes with pastel eyeshadow and sparkly gloss on their lips.
Their looks seem antiquated to me, although they matched their boyfriends' baggy jeans and long shorts and hooded sweatshirts with college names on them topped off with a head of gelled hair.
I didn't go to Henderson or East and I never thought about attending West Chester University. I spent 15 years in the Quaker system, learning about India and doing yoga in second grade and not knowing a thing about Dead American White Men until seventh, except for Benjamin Franklin (from Pennsylvania), Abraham Lincoln (freed the slaves), William Penn (QUAKER), and various abolitionists. Recess was spent playing house in cemetaries divided between Hicksites and Orthodox Quakers.
During high school, I mainly socialized with people who were interested in organic farming. When we went out at night on van trips leaving from Central, we would always observe those who went to public schools and realized that if we didn't go to boarding school, we would be them and go home to our parents instead of our dorm floor, with lights out and skybeds and shiking.
So now I am among the aboriginal West Chester peoples; those who spent Friday nights at the mall and Saturday nights in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen and later, keggers in someone's house. I realize that I am as foreign as if I were from Bulgaria.
And now instead of WCU, I go to Sarah Lawrence, which is like Quaker education in a lot of ways minus the focus on pacifism and the Inner Light. People who wear what is de rigeur in the WC are considered anomalies, and sometimes others wonder what those kids are doing here.
I was really sad about leaving West Chester last summer, but now I realize that I've never actually lived there.