stranger in a strange land

Being Jewish in Christian america is an interesting experience.
I think I spent my early years trying desperately to assimilate and blend in with my peers, embarrassed to death of my foreign-accented mother throwing a slew of high-decibled fast-flowing hebrew at me, longing to be like my best friend in elementary school with her soft spoken uber-american parents with their 'okey-dokeys' and phony fronts. While I've mostly grown out of the need to blend into invisibility and conform to those around me, and with hindsight would never want those people as my parents, sometimes I wonder what life is like for those in the majority. I don't think about it often, more so perhaps during the holidays. Still its an interesting life experience to always be different in some way from those around you. All of the 'merry christm....er, happy hannukah...' s and awkwardness that comes with that. Perhaps because I am one of the 'different' ones, I never feel any kind of strangeness about being around those of different backgrounds or religious affiliations, yet sometimes I feel the christians around me find my jewishness very foreign, as if I have cancer, or some sort of deformity or something. I wonder how it has shaped my personality. I wonder what its like to feel 'normal' and like everyone else. But really, does *anyone* feel 'normal' and like they totally fit in at all times? I wonder...

What really got me thinking about it was my son complaining about how some kids at school always manage to fit something in about him being Jewish, whether it makes sense or not. Its like, constantly having someone say, 'you're different. you're not like us.' Does this sort of thing build character, or is it just an additional arbitrary hurdle to add on to all of the difficulties of growing up and living this life?

But really, who wants to be just like everyone else? Boring!

awesome: radiohead live