Week 3’s blogging prompt is “write about what is happening around you.”  There’s not a whole lotta shaking goin’ on around here at the moment, so I am dusting off a draft.

Some people spend their entire lives in the same community.  They are born there, they grow up there, they return there after college (unless their community has its own college), they marry and raise a family there, and they are buried there.  There is a security that comes from that sort of continuity in one’s life.  There is a foundation that is hard to shake when you belong somewhere.  “There’s no place like home” means something to you.

But some people don’t have this experience.  Some are military brats, moving from post to post as their parents serve our country.  They end up with a life rich in cultural experiences, and they collect friends from far and wide.  Social media has made it easier to maintain these friendships, unlike back in the snail mail days.  Social studies and geography lessons are a bit more meaningful to people who have traveled all over the country or the world.  What they lack in roots, they can make up in diversity.

Then there are those people who don’t make moving a lifestyle, but they move to a different town when their parents change jobs or other circumstances make moving necessary.  They are forever known as “the new kid,” even if they never move again.  They could live in their new community for the next thirty years, and there would still be situations where they were reminded that they weren’t born there.  But it may have something to do with when this move occurs.  The earlier in life that a person moves, the better their odds of being accepted as a local.

I vaguely remember moving from my birth town of Salina to Glasco.  I was only two years old when we moved.  But I was accepted in Glasco.  I made friends, had playdates, and transitioned well into school and was at the top of my class, if there could be such a thing in first grade.  I belonged.  My parents, however, were outsiders in the community, and it was difficult for my dad to maintain an auto repair business; when my mom managed to alienate the entire town by pushing through a bond to build a city pool (which the town is very proud of now, I might add), it was time for us to literally pack our bags in the middle of the night and get out of town.  Initially, we were supposed to stay with my paternal grandma and have a mobile home installed on her property, but zoning laws said otherwise.  My parents needed to find us a home quickly–it was December and cold and snowy, so we couldn’t live in the army tent that we had spent the summer in; we needed an actual house.  Since my dad’s hometown was now out, they turned to my mom’s hometown, WaKeeney.

Even in WaKeeney, we were starting out as the new kids of new kids–my mom had arrived in WaKeeney in the early 1950’s after her parents divorced in Dodge City and her mom remarried a WaKeeney native.  Mom was not only a new kid, but also a stepkid.  While my step-grandpa was from a well-established family in the county, Mom was still his step-daughter, so not entirely accepted as a local by association.  Grandpa raised Mom and her siblings for a number of years, and he was always “Grandpa” to me whether by blood or not.  When we moved back, it was my great-grandparents’ home that we moved into, and we helped Grandpa on the family farm.

Mom had graduated from WaKeeney, so returning there provided her with some leverage to be accepted as a local.  She had returned, and this meant something.  She knew the people in the community, and she knew the connections that come from putting down roots in a town.  If you don’t know who is married to who and who is third cousins with the waitress at the diner, social mayhem can ensue with embarrassing results.  Knowing connections is important.

This time, I was 7 years old when we moved.  I don’t know if it is the town that made the difference, or the age, but there was a difference.  Apparently I had missed the pivotal acceptance ceremony by one year–the kindergarten play.  I was in first grade, but my classmates were still talking about that kindergarten play.  Heck, they were still talking about it our senior year of high school.  I had missed being part of it, but I learned all about it.  My class had performed Little Red Riding Hood.  I knew who played what part, and interestingly, the more important the part played determined one’s place in the popularity hierarchy.  This fascinated the people-studying part of me.  I heard all about who said what, who forgot their lines, who knocked over part of the scenery.  My classmates would reenact the play during recess.  For several years, “What part did you play in kindergarten?” was a standard question–when I would reply that I had moved here in first grade, there would be an awkward “oh…” and then the cold shoulder would begin.  My brother was in kindergarten when we moved, so the teacher quickly found him a part in that year’s play; he wore a little yellow shirt and sat in front of the fake fireplace and swept it out during the play.  So Jon was spared the ordeal of not being part of the kindergarten play when we moved; I’m not sure that it completely removed the “new kid” stigma, but at least he had an answer when asked what part he played.

Something interesting happened shortly after I moved to WaKeeney.  We would occasionally have visitors.  Most of the time, it was cousins of classmates who were visiting from out of town.  But one day it was Roger.  Word had gotten around that Roger would be visiting, and my classmates were all abuzz.  I wasn’t sure what the big deal was, being a new kid and all.  Finally I asked one of my classmates who Roger was.  Roger had been a student in our class in kindergarten, and he had played one of the important roles in the play, so he was up there on the popularity hierarchy.  But he had moved away before I arrived in January of our first grade year, which is why I didn’t know him from Adam.  The day Roger showed up to visit, my classmates pretty much swarmed him in front of the bulletin board by the classroom door.  It reminded me of fans greeting a rock star.  After the visit was over, my classmates talked about Roger for days.  The next year, Roger moved back and rejoined our class.  Another new student who had moved here after me was puzzled over how quickly Roger had been accepted by our classmates, while we other “new kids” were still banished to the outskirts of society.  I explained to my classmate that Roger was not really new–he was the returning hero.

Would it make a difference if I were to move back to what was my hometown for 12 years?  I’m not sure.  My grandparents are long gone, and only a few of my step-cousins remain there. They are not cousins I was close to, we just knew we were on the same family tree but the branches were far apart.  A few of my classmates still live there.  I see their posts on social media, and I can see where I would have been able to participate if I were there.  I could have helped plenty with the PTO bake sale, baking and making posters and manning the booth.  I could have had kids going through the same religious education classes that I went through, but not in the same building thanks to Mother Nature and those pesky acts of God.  I could have had kids going across the same stage I crossed during my graduation.  My classmates knew my strengths, and I would not have had to toot my own horn when it came to volunteering to help with activities–they would know already that I can draw and help and be there for whatever needs to be done.  And my kids would have had friends near their own ages in the children of my classmates.  I would have known who was related to who and who slept with who when we were kids and now would make social situations awkward or not.  So even though I was always a “new kid” there, maybe in a generation or two we would have made it to “local” status.

My own kids have always been “new kids”.  Even if I had remained in the town we lived in when they were born, they would have been “new kids”.  The town I lived in when my sons were born did not have its own school–they would have been bussed to a town 10 miles away. The town we lived in when our daughter was born probably would have accepted all of the kids since they moved there when they were in kindergarten or younger, but we ended up moving when they were in elementary school.  So they spent the rest of their school careers as “new kids”.  We have now lived in our community 17 years, but we are outsiders for the most part.  I’m not sure where they will finally settle and establish their roots when they become adults, but I wish them well.  I admire that my kids have a knack for networking and “finding their tribe” when they move around.  It is a beautiful thing to watch.