baudot

Where I'm From: Mobile, Alabama

A parent gifts their child a way of thinking about the world; A whole seamless view of how things fit together. It has to be good enough to last until you can stand on your own long enough to sort things out, and take a hit when you're wrong. Those are the teen years, when we throw ourselves out of the nest, questioning each thing we thought we knew. This isn't about rebellion. It's about moving beyond what your parent's believed. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for the worse.

Growing up in a small, slow town gives me endless foci for my discontent. There were the breaks in conversation, when the other person's thoughts would stumble an idea that didn't fit in a world where not everyone was Christian. There was the high school where 500 white students and 500 black students studied side by side during the day, then split to the east and west sides of the courtyard for lunch without mingling. Culture was a four hour trip north to the Shakespeare Festival. Science was three hours up Interstate 65 past that, at Space Camp. Debauchery was two hours away to the west, in New Orleans, if you were eager enough to speed a little. It seemed like there wasn't anything in town other than a rusty World War Two battleship.

So in all that, it was easy to miss that all this was happening under a blanket of oak branches and spanish moss. If we didn't notice the codes and signals certain elders used in planning Mardi Gras, this was the point. And who appreciates victorian manors or spanish villas when they're preoccupied with the ignorance they swim through daily? Who recognizes gentility and civility when they've known nothing else?