What are you, a New Yorker? A Virginian? What?

Last night, during a congenial after-dinner chat, I reiterated my idea (from an earlier post here) that perhaps the way you choose the place with which you identify is by looking to where you had your first serious crush. Mine, having been a wallop of a crush, was definitely in Warsaw and so even though I lived an equally large number of years in NY, I still consider myself more of a Varsovian and not really a New Yorker. Several points were made in response to this and I am posting them here because they offer us a chance to look critically at our younger years:

* Most report having strong crushes at very young ages and they view this as a poor marker of identification with a community. It was suggested that the better phrase may be “had a serious crush and could act upon it in a significant way.” But what does that mean? Kissing? Hair-pulling? Hand-holding? Or are we talking about an out and out act of physical errrr… embrace?

* One person said that even though he moved early on from NY to Virginia, his parents were such New Yorkers to the core (hey, New Yorkers always see themselves as “to the core”) that it was without a doubt a family identity that got passed on to the kids.

* Another said that if you lived your entire childhood years in one community then EVERYONE who came in later (moved there and joined the school in fourth grade, for example) was an outsider. They may CALL themselves a Yonkers dude, but they WEREN’T perceived as such by TRUE Yonkers-types.

* To which someone added that they are ashamed of themselves for the treatment they bestowed on true outsiders. This person, whom I would regard as pretty high on the kindness continuum, admitted to circulating a petition to “get [newcomers] X & Y out of the school NOW!” She reports being relieved to note during a recent high school reunion that this did not appear to leave any permanent scars on either X nor Y who, it seems, are among the more successful of the lot [yeah, sure, after years of therapy…].

* And then everyone tripped over each other in their recollections of real "formative years" behaviors: the unintentional (and admissions were made of intentional as well) hurts bestowed upon other classmates, all arising out of bending to “peer pressure.” It was said that if you cannot recall a single incident of (not necessarily deliberate) unkindness perpetrated by you during your school years then you are not being honest with yourself.

So am I a Varsovian because it is there that I offered no protest or defense of poor Fela during the birthday party prank of looking for bugs to put in her hair? Is the true place of affinity that, where you made a menace of yourself? Somehow I like my “fell in love with someone” dimension better.