Prejudiced Against Prejudice (Part 2 of 2)

The Hoosier hayseed as I was on my first day of 8th grade, I might have qualified for the subject of one of Norm Peterson’s (George Wendt in the 80s hit comedy Cheers) favorite quips.

Milkbone Underwear
This is another story I’ve related before — the one about my first day of school in California in September of 1969. We had literally just rolled into town two days prior, on Saturday afternoon, arriving in Long Beach at the conclusion of our cross-country journey from Middletown, Indiana. It was the first Monday morning of 8th grade; I didn’t know a soul and probably hadn’t made direct eye contact with anyone until the memorable moment that occurred while I was sitting in my first class.

There I was, arriving on the scene at Leland Stanford Junior High; a thirteen year-old boy who could have easily passed for ten, sporting a bowl-type haircut, a rather loud short-sleeve madras print shirt (top button buttoned, of course), and a pair of yellow-gold polyester pin-striped Sears Tuff-Skin bell-bottom trousers that gave way to about 3-4 inches of black socks and exposed ankle.

I might as well have been wearing a big ol’ bull’s eye on my back.

Norm Peterson of the classic TeeVee comedy Cheers might well have described my circumstance as, “livin’ in a dog-eat-dog world — and AJ’s wearin’ Milkbone underwear.”

On that early September Monday morning, after locating my 8th Grade homeroom in the 800 building, I took a seat on the far right-hand row of desks, about two or three seats from the front of class. I stared straight ahead as we all awaited the appearance of our homeroom teacher.

The class was abuzz in muffled conversation as excited adolescents described to one another what they’d been up to since June. I heard a few giggles coming from behind; I had an idea but didn’t want to turn around to see if they were being directed at me. It wouldn’t be too much longer before I’d find out.

“Hey…” a voice from the desk behind me whispered, accompanied by a pair of bony taps between my shoulder blades.

“Hey, kid…”

I sheepishly turned to my peer back over my shoulder, where a pair of maniacal blue-black eyes flashed back at me. They were attached to a freckle-faced boy with wildly mussed, long and stringy hair, featuring a grin that would have left Alice’s Cheshire Cat with an inferiority complex.

He didn’t appear to be much bigger than me, but more than made up for his lack of size with attitude. He wore an oversized plaid Pendleton flannel shirt, which I would later learn to associate as the uniform of the ‘hard guys’ as I referred to them; boys whom you definitely wanted to be on the right side of, socially.

Long before my first social studies class, I would be faced with my first social test in this brave, new world.

“Hey, kid,” my leering classmate continued, “Are you…a GEEK?” The peanut gallery behind him and in the row to my left erupted in laughter.

“No. No, I’m not,” I replied, as I turned back around, mortified, once again face-forward in my seat.

Fitting in — in a hurry
The good news is, I can now look back on that first day of school and laugh — almost hysterically. I would indeed find my way around in the social jungle that was junior High school, and before the year was out, I’d have the hard guys in their Pendletons coming to my defense on the thankfully seldom occasions in which I was picked on by other boys around campus.

By the end of the school year I would run for student council (for a term beginning the first semester of the following year) and would win. My personality blossomed and so did my grades. I went from C’s and D’s in Indiana to A’s and B’s in my new home — appropriately for me — nicknamed, The Golden State.

I opened up as a person in the 8th grade. I was transformed from a shy, introverted, often angry little boy into a socially confident, semi-gregarious, um…little boy.

I may not have been one of the ‘cool kids,’ but I was close.

Fortunately, I was a quick study. I learned from day one how to adapt; I lost the accent, unbuttoned that top shirt collar button and never fastened it again. Even later, in the 1980s, when the buttoned-down collar-look became fashionable, I resisted adopting it for the longest time; and for nothing more than that very silly connotation of geekdom that was still branded into the hide of my childhood psyche.

Funny thing though, in looking back on it all with the retrospection of now having lived in the south for 20 years, I realize how insidious that kind of thinking can be — and how needlessly damaging. Why did it matter that I spoke with a regional accent? Why did it matter that I wore ‘floods’ because my parents couldn’t afford to replace my pants before I out grew them? Why did it matter that the label on the back of my jeans said Tuffskins or Towncraft instead of Levis?

And why THE HELL did I, only months later, actively begin deriding and judging other kids for committing the same social sins that I had been guilty of?

Goin’ To, Music City, Music City, Here I come...
When we made the decision to move to Nashville, in my mind, it was for one reason and one reason only: to continue my career in the music business. The more-affordable cost of living and allegedly better environment in which to raise our two children were Michelle’s reasons, not mine.

I’d be lying to say that I was at all looking forward to the culture shock I knew was waiting for me. I did not want to leave California, but nonetheless, deep-down inside, I knew that it was something we needed to do as a family. So I went willingly, but with plenty of trepidation.

My social training told me that I was going to a very strange place; one that I was conditioned to look upon with disdain. You see, I had been this way before, but in reverse.

Given how I’d gotten to California in the first place, you’d think I would have known better. Sheesh — talk about reprogramming!

I guess I didn’t really know how prejudiced I was until I got here.

Again, I’m not talking about racial prejudice. I was raised to be colorblind. I can honestly say that race has never ever been an issue with me. However I’m ashamed to say that the same kind of social prejudice that was used against me as a thirteen year old coming into that brave ‘cool’ world of Southern California was something that I in turn would incorporate into my own worldview for many, many years.

I can clearly remember my biggest reticence to moving to Nashville was my perception of leaving the world of ‘enlightenment’ and plunging myself headlong into the land that intelligence forgot — or so I’d been told. I mean, everybody knows that Hee-Haw was the first reality show on TeeVee, right? People in Nashville really do walk around in overalls, wearing straw hats and hanging out in cornfields all day, telling each other silly jokes, don’t they?

And surely the only music they play in that town are those twangy Country songs about somebody’s long-lost hound dog with perhaps an occasional Johnny Cash tune thrown in for good measure.

These were the things that I was more-or-less convinced were either true or pretty close to the same. And as ridiculous as that is, to some degree, it’s at least the flavor of Nashville’s perception in other parts of this country. I know it was pretty much my pervading impression, despite the fact that deep down I knew how silly it was for me to acknowledge such bullshit.

But what if it was?

Imagine my surprise when I arrived here only to find that most everyone I met actually had teeth and lived in houses with indoor plumbing!

I’m obviously exaggerating here just a bit, but in my experience, the spirit of my little jibe was pretty accurate. People believe what they’re told — and sold; and this stereotype of Nashville and the deep south in general is one that hopefully in recent years has finally begun to die down. However, it never ceases to amaze me — largely via comments I read and hear associated with the assumptions of hockey fans from other NHL cities — that this derisive image still seems to abound in people’s minds, despite loads of evidence to the contrary.

Social stereotypes work in every bit the same way that racial ones do. Prejudice is the quintessential definition of ignorance because it not only presumes things that aren’t necessarily so, it promotes those beliefs as fuel for fear.

If political correctness is ‘correct,’ then it’s correct for everyone. No one person or group has a monopoly on the truth or the right to infringe upon another person’s political conviction, short of that conviction denying one’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

And while the aforementioned credo of the Declaration of Independence is said to be of broad interpretation, we know as well as its authors did some 235 years ago just how narrow it is in spirit. We can wrangle all we want about political ramifications surrounding the notion, but that’s all it is: wrangling; rhetoric; words whose intent is ultimately purposed to attain or maintain control in a political context, even when real politics aren’t even involved.

It’s the same for the ridiculous notion of social superiority based on geography, dialect (or the lack thereof), relative income, or other trappings of social status.

Nope, ya really can’t mess this one up, folks. It’s obvious that the preamble of the Declaration is all about respect — one human being for another; nothing more and nothing less. It’s the giving of respect that generates freedom, not the other way around; true, it’s a two-way street, but if it doesn’t start with me, it may as well not even exist.

It’s up to us to turn the other cheek; it’s up to us to respect others before demanding that they respect us; not to exclude and castigate them for being different, unless there’s real evidence that that difference is destructive and not merely a departure from prevailing opinion.

Apart from that, true freedom is a myth; and the pursuit of happiness is nothing more than another device we use to get our own way.


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