Untypical

It was middle-class America in the 1960s, a quiet suburb of Detroit. City blocks were a perfect square, with sidewalks on every street. Nearly every house within 12 blocks had children and many of them were my age. We all walked to school together, climbed the monkey bars together and shared lunch. We knew each other's families and even knew where everyone went to church. People who moved into our neighborhood, stayed. It was an unhurried, unexciting life. It felt safe.

Some folks were immigrants. My next door neighbors had emigrated from Hungary. My best friend's parents had escaped Poland and found their way to our neighborhood. Across the street there was a family from Italy who had six children. My 4th grade school teacher who lived in Ontario Canada, rode the bus to teach school every single day. People were unique and managed life in different ways. It's just the way things were. No one complained.
The thing I remember most about those years is how weird I was. It didn't occur to me at the time that everyone in my neighborhood might be a little weird. Being from different places and cultures can do that. I just knew that I wasn't like everyone else.
For a while it made me sad.

For one thing, I didn't talk like they did. Michiganders talk mostly through their nose. And they all talked really loud. Although I was born in Michigan, I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't a typical northerner.

Whatever that means.

Today things aren't so mundane. I don't live in the same neighborhood, don't know the same people, don't talk like my neighbors talk. Sometimes I'm not even sure I know where I live.

I'm still weird, but now I'm OK with it. I finally discovered it's fine to be untypical. It makes things more interesting. Just like my old neighborhood.