Why I won’t say I’m from Florida
When you go to a new school, college in particular, you get asked the same question, “Where are you from?” People expect to hear you name one town or one city in which they will judge you off of and make preconceived ideas of who you are. The answer I give will often define how people think of me. Most people have an idea of what kinds of people live in different areas around the states and around the world from the people they have met or the traveling they have done.
I’m from Darien, Connecticut, a town of 20,000. 19,500 of those people are white. The majority of fathers wakeup every morning to board the train into New York City working as investment bankers. Moms stay home to bring their kids deli sandwiches during the day and wait to drive them to their sports after school.
“Where are you from?” I hear the question whenever I meet someone new, and I still don’t know how to answer it. I assume people name the place that most defines who they are. For someone who moved junior year of high school, I can credit Florida for shaping me almost as much as I can Connecticut.
I moved to Sarasota, FL and started attending a high school triple the size I had been used to. There was diversity and a teen pregnancy program that held a daycare on campus. There were students who had been tested into a program called International Baccalaureate that were receiving college credit on a separate floor of the high school. I was used to knowing everyone in my high school, where the cliques remained the same as they did in 6th grade. Any accidental pregnancy was kept on the down low. Girls were sent to “boarding school” and would reappear a year later. All AP courses were reserved for those who would later attend Ivy Leagues, as they were known to be unbearably challenging.
Three more years in Darien and I bet I would have grown tougher, more independent, and outspoken. I would think that being successful meant spending long days in New York City. That being a size 2 and playing a sport for every season was normal. But I wasn’t in Connecticut. I was in Florida. I was out of my borders. In class with kids wearing muscle tees, burning exhaust out of their trucks as soon as that last bell had rung, and wearing the same seasons’ clothes all year round.
I found myself clinging to my Northern roots. I continued my sarcasm, wore my knee-high boots in 70-degree weather and never toned down the voice I inherited from my New York bred parents.
I could just say I am from Florida, but that would give no insight as to the person I am, what my family is like, or my childhood. They wouldn’t know that I came from a town where everybody new everyone’s business. A town where parents moved to raise their kids knowing they would be sheltered from normalcies. A town that houses started at a million and nearly everyone belonged to a country club.
My personality traits are still rooted where they most developed. Living in Florida has made me idolize all the things that make up the northeast, people included. There’s a lot I take for granted living down here, a simple, “How are you?” from the cashier at the grocery store or a “Bless you” from a stranger, I’m reminded of these differences whenever I return to the Northeast.
The place I idolize ends up hitting reality at me when I step off the plane and see no smiling faces or good attitudes. Maybe it’s seasonal depression hitting hard but it seems to drag on to the summer months as well.
Everyday I either come across someone that loves living in the Sunshine State or hates it. On both sides, people voice their strong opinions. Haters will say the states too flat, the heats unbearable and the public school systems aren’t promising.
After three years, I carry joy that I grew up praying for snow days in the winter months, sledding down the hills of streets and attending schools that taught me in depth of every subject and challenged me ruthlessly. I was taught how to write a persuasive essay with both sides in mind throughout every sentence. To read a story and understand the authors purpose for each sentence and interpret the multiple meanings hidden in text. To present a topic to people with the confidence and research like I had been studying it my entire life.
Certain characteristics come through when people converse with someone from the Northeast. I hear a loud voice and strong opinions. I see Nantucket red, and a Vineyard Vines’ whale engraved in pastel color clothing. I gather from them a confident attitude that shows they’re assertive and determined.
People not from the Northeast can take Northerner’s confidence as cocky and their loud mouth as harsh spoken. To me it’s the characteristics that I was surrounded with growing up and to me it’s reminder of home when I come across someone that shares those characteristics.
When first meeting someone, no one cares about all this. They just want an answer. So, I tell them I’m from Connecticut but I now live in Florida. Chances are I’ve lost them at the “but.”
