Ep #51: My Uncommon Story: Racism, Snobbery and the Life of the Mind

Episode Summary

Jenna reflects on her adolescence, unpacking stories of hardship and triumph that have molded her into who she is today.

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Show Notes

Join me for the continuation of My Uncommon Story, a series reflecting on and sharing experiences from my upbringing. By sharing stories from my youth, I hope to give a glimpse into the roots of my particular (uncommon) philosophies.

This week, I share my experiences with racism, snobbiness, style, and efforts to fit in during my adolescence in Hawaii. Looking back, I realize that the actions of my youth molded my future in positive and challenging ways. I overcame, I changed, and I pushed myself.

Enjoy this week's story, which takes a close look at being a teenager in the 80s. As you listen, you may consider experiences from your youth that have similarly challenged you, forced you to grow, or thoughts that you had to unlearn down the road.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• The habits Jenna learned and some she had to unlearn from youth.

• How experience can impact biases later in life.

• Why a willingness to change is essential.

• Why you don’t have to do it on your own.

• The power of groupthink.

• How to reflect on your own life story with compassion.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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• Ep #49: My Uncommon Story: Growing Up

Full Episode Transcript:

Hey, this is a new series where I'm giving you the context behind what I share in this podcast, i.e., what went on in my life to get me here. Think of this as part entrepreneurial mindset building told through stories, part historical nonfiction, and part audacious, salacious, beach read. I hope you enjoy.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Hey, welcome back to The Uncommon Way. Today, we're continuing the series where I'm talking about the stories and context coming behind all of the opinions and ideas that I share. Before we pick up where we left off, I just have two quick things to tell you all. One, is that we did make a decision on where we're living. We are going to be living in the Raleigh-Durham area.

So, any of you that know anything about that area, please fill me in on all the things. If you have realtor recommendations, different neighborhoods or towns we should be looking at, things we should be doing while we're there, I want it all. Thanks in advance. I’m so grateful.

The second thing, is that this episode will probably be coming out right about the time that we're heading off to Spain for July. We have some episodes lined up for you while I'm gone, but I won't actually be checking in here on the podcast. So, please head over to Instagram, and stay in touch with me there.

I'll be sharing a lot of behind-the-scenes things. We're rebranding the website. We're going to have lots of fun things that we're doing, people visiting us, and just kind of that snapshot into Spanish life. And the lifestyle of a coach who is kind of working. I'll probably be working about four, maybe five hours, a week. And also, really living it up. Come join me.

Now, I know when I first started this series, I was talking a lot about how fun it would be and there'll be all these little juicy tidbits. But any hero's journey really has ups and downs. And this episode is introducing one of the more challenging parts of my life. But I’ve decided to include it.

I think it's important because, one, it was so formative for me and led to so many different outcomes, I think, spurred so many different outcomes. This is after all, the story of my life. But I also think it's relevant to a conversation, a national conversation, that we're having. And it's a point of view that we don't get to hear.

All right, so this episode, I'm going to be completely honest, feels a little scary to record. I'm going to be talking about race. I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone that I am a White woman. So, just with those two facts right there, this conversation may be disallowed or at least unappreciated in certain circles. It might even push some deep buttons.

I'm still going to talk about it from the best vantage point that I can, which is the one that I have right now, and is far from perfect. And quite honestly, not totally neutral. I have a lot of work I could do and will do, will continue to do, on this.

By speaking now when I don't have everything figured out, and knowing that I'll never have everything figured out, I hope that the net effect of what I share is a net help for our conversation, rather than a net negative. If I do offend, hurt or trigger anyone, I actually do feel that; that means something to me. If you're open to communicating with me about it, I would welcome that.

So, in the last episode, I talked about some of the benefits and the challenges of growing up in the military. I was born in the Virginia Beach area where there's a large Navy community. Then, we spent a lot of the time in my first few years in the Mediterranean, following my dad’s ships around. We were in the San Diego area until I was about five. Between five and eight, I was living in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California.

But this story picks up after that, when we moved to Hawaii. We had the most amazing house right on the beach. It overlooked all of Diamondhead and Waikiki. So, if you think about how O‘ahu is kind of like a circle, and at the bottom, Pearl Harbor comes in and takes a big dent out of the island. On one side, there's Waikiki, Honolulu. Then, on the other side of Pearl Harbor, there's an area called Ewa Beach.

Nowadays, that area has been turned into Ko Olina, which some of you might have stayed at. But back in the day, y'all, it was sticks. It was sticks. I still remember the first time my dad took us out to see where our house would be. He'd gone ahead of the family to kind of get everything organized, and I was finishing up school.

He kept driving and driving and driving through sugarcane fields. When you are in a sugarcane field, you can't see out of it, right? Because the cane is really high. So, it just felt interminable, these roads; and then the next turn, and then the next turn, and more cane fields and more cane fields. Then we finally got out there, and our jaws just hit the ground when we saw this house, or at least the property where the house was. The house itself was just kind of a ranch house.

I’ve got tell you, for the first few years, life was pretty blissful. Because we were on the military base, and so everybody that I was going to school with were the children of military people. Now, military people, of course, they live all over the world. Then, they often tend to marry people that they meet all over the world. So, us military kids, we're all different colors, and shapes and sizes. We just kind of grow up thinking that's how things are.

But it turns out, right outside the military base, in this area called Ewa Beach, and in many, many areas of Hawaii at that time, that's not how they think of the world. Specifically in Hawaii, with the history of colonialism. There’re basically two races in Hawaii; you are either local, or you are “haole”, meaning White. It is actually a derogatory term. It's used more and more in a friendly sense nowadays, but back then it was not something that you wanted to be.

I found this out firsthand when I reached junior high school. Because there was no longer a junior high school on the base, all of us military kids had to go into town to the local junior high school. There were some children that instead of going there went to private schools, I was not one of them. My dad had a very strong opinion that public school was just fine for his children. He wasn't interested in raising a prima donna, as he called it.

I remember him saying specifically, “I think this will build character.” I remember the first day, getting off the school bus and walking into that school. I didn't realize it at the time, but we were the bus that everyone was kind of interested in seeing. We were this group of predominantly White kids, or at least non-local kids. There were no other buses coming in that were like that.

But as we would walk down the hallways, the kids would line up on either side and they would shout the worst insults at us, that you can, I think, really imagine. Specifically for young girls who are going through puberty at junior high school, there were very graphic insults about us and our bodies and our whiteness, and even the smell of our bodies. If we were to look up… In local language, when you make eye contact with somebody, it can mean that you want to fight.

So, then they'd ask or shout in pidgin English, “What, you want to fight?” In their pidgin, it was, “You like beef?” Sometimes we could just look down again at the floor and kind of scurry away, and they'd leave us alone. But other times, if they were having fun with it and wanted to make a show of it, they would start to posture and come close.

The thing about the way that people would fight, is that you would bring in all of your cousins, right? All of your friends and everyone would have your back. But us military kids, we move every two or three years, we don't have a whole lot of loyalty with each other. Yes, we're friends. But when you're faced with a group of 20 locals, I don't know how much we're going to stand up for each other.

So, you definitely didn't want to be alone. But you also didn't want to be confronted, because then everyone would usually scatter; all the other military kids would scatter. Or some of, I guess, the braver or more higher temper people would get into fights. I mostly was just trying to keep my head down and get to school, get to class, where I felt safer with the teachers there.

But the thing is, I remember teachers walking through the hallways while this was going on. And while, for instance, some of the local kids would stand up at the top of stairways, they'd lean over and they’d just wait until they saw a White kid, and then they'd spit. It was a game to see what White kids you could spit on, and how many White kids you could spit on. So, we would have to wait at the bottom.

If we had a class that was in the upper level, we're always trying to find the less populated stairwells. Always having to make these roundabout routes to try and get to our classrooms. My perception, and that of my friends as well, is that this was condoned.

This was condoned because of the colonial legacy that had been in Hawaii. Because of the fact that, “White people shouldn't be here. We don't want you here anyway. We now have every right to do to your children what we will, or do to your children what we want.”

But somehow, there was safety within the classroom, at least physical safety. Because there were other rules inside the classroom. Such as, that you should never be too smart. There was very strong value placed in not being smart.

Not just among the children, I've seen this with adults as well. Where the default is just to say, “Well, I wouldn't know about that. I probably don't know about that,” or kind of laughing, even if the conversation does go in a direction that uses a four-syllable word, for instance, “Oh, big word.”

I don't have experience at other junior high schools, obviously. But from what I've heard, this is just a general age where you are staying within the lines of very strong social norms. Perhaps it was all just amplified because of our age. So, while there was a certain amount of safety in the classroom, that really vanished as soon as you left the door. Even people that I would talk to in the classroom sometimes, would get outside the classroom and then I'd have a completely different experience with them.

But the worst of all, I think, was going to the bathroom. Because when you went to the bathroom during class, I mean, you'd be completely alone walking your way to the restroom. I remember, there was one girl in particular who just hated me.

Now, something I haven't mentioned yet, is that I was an early bloomer and I've always been tall. So, especially compared to Polynesian and Asian ethnicities, I stood out. I was easily a foot-and-a-half taller than everybody, but really slight. I mean, not someone that would scare them in a fight at all. And way too curvy for the norm.

There was one girl who really disliked me, and could spot me, obviously, across the crowd, because I was so tall and stood out. I remember one day when I'd gone out to the restroom, and she just happened to be walking along the hall. I remember that moment when I saw her, and that decision point where I had to decide whether to go back to the classroom or keep going. I decided to keep going.

As we got close, she came and walked and stood right in front of me, so that I'd have to move either right or left. Then, when I would move right or left, she would move right or left. I remember keeping my head down, looking at the floor, in just complete subservience as she was saying things to me.

That type of environment, that type of situation has been so triggering to me over time. It's led to a lot of outbursts in my adult life. Because that feeling of having to keep it in, when every cell in your body is screaming at you to lift up your head… I don't really even have words. It's just palpable within me.

These instances with her were getting more and more aggravated. I was wondering how to manage this, when, luckily, I realized that in one of my electives, which was shop class, one of the people in there was her boyfriend. So, as we were all working together in teams for the shop classes and having to share tools and equipment; he actually seemed like a really nice guy. We kind of became friends.

I remember one time, when they were together in the hallway, she kind of stepped out towards me. Of course, I had my head down. I could see his hand, and it was just a few fingers, it was so slight, right on the skin of her arm. It was just enough to keep her from moving any closer to me. Right? That slight little indication.

She just stepped back against the wall, and I passed by. That was the last time she ever confronted me. I do think about the power of that one gesture, of just one person saying, “Hey, let's not go there,” and, of course, to what a deep imprint racism can have on someone.

I certainly only acutely experienced it like that for two years of my life. I could always go back to my very safe military home environment with other people that thought like me, and a lot of them who looked like me. But I'll be honest, when I say that for years, just hearing somebody who spoke with Filipino intonation, the hairs would rise on the back of my neck.

I would go out of my way to avoid interactions with people that, in any way, my brain thought were similar, or even were exhibiting a similar posture to what I'd witnessed. It's interesting, because as an adult now, I think back and I don't remember a time that I ever had a conversation with my parents and told them how bad it was.

I've even asked my dad about it. I'm like, “Do you remember me ever talking to you about this?” Because my dad in California, my biological dad, he was sort of the person that I could go to and talk about what was going on back home. So, I thought that maybe if I hadn't talked to my mom and stepdad about it, maybe I had talked to him. But he honestly does not remember any conversations about how egregious it was.

I think that part of it was just that day and age. That generation where we just thought we had to deal with things. Although, I think there's something else. I didn't really land on this fully until I was reflecting on this conversation with my mom, telling her that I was going to record this episode. She said, “You know what, Jen? You just didn't want help. I finally had to step back and just let you do what you were going to do. Because every time I talked about intervening, you said, ‘No, don't do it.’”

I know that's common with kids, that they don't want their mom intervening and maybe making the situation worse. But it really hit me, because of some events, that I'll tell you about later, in life. It was the same mindset that got me into so much trouble, or brought on so much suffering later on in my life, thinking that I had to do it all on my own. That if I needed to ask for help, I just wasn't doing it well enough.

But I also know that there was a level of shame involved, as well. I can't even imagine, if my parents had pressed me on what they were actually saying to me, what the insults and slurs actually were, I just can't even imagine at that age, telling them.

What I suspect, due to events that happened later in my life, that I'll tell you about, I think that there was also a level of thinking that somehow I deserved it. Or because my ancestors were White, that maybe it was a reckoning or it was fair that we were treated that way. Which I now so fully disagree with.

There's got to be room for adults to have conversations about settling the wrongs of the past, without the children having to battle it out on the playground. Because I know that wasn't just damaging for me, that was damaging for the kids that were bullying also. And those same children, placed in a different context, I guess, different surroundings, would have a completely different experience.

I know that, because there was a year that I went to summer school. And the only place that offered the class that I wanted, was at an inner-city school in Honolulu. I was literally the only White person. I remember sitting in the car with my mom, and the desire to go into that class was so strong, I really, really wanted to take that class in summer school, but looking around at all of those brown faces scared the hell out of me.

I got out of the car and I started walking. I remember the first people looking, and I felt like I'd seen those kinds of looks before, and then someone walked up to me and was like, “Hey, where are you from? Are you going to school here?”

Whoa, it was like I was the queen of the fucking party. People were so nice. They were introducing me to their friends. They were laughing and joking in the hallways. They just thought it was so fun, as if I were an exchange student from I don't even know where.

I was this novelty at the school. They were so warm-hearted, so open and excited. I even kept in touch with them later, when I was in high school. I ended up inviting one of the guys to my homecoming dance; we were really good friends.

While when I was younger, I did have some thoughts like, “I never would have done that. I never would have been like them.” The truth is, as I got older and older, every time I had a thought like, “I never would…,” it's like the universe would somehow put me into some sort of situation where I would see how I would go with the group think. Or how I would enter into a power dynamic, where I was making sure I'd come out on top. Or I'd make a judgment about a local person just because of the way they looked.

But when more and more and more people come in, it can quickly become ‘us vs. them’. Then, when even more of the minority group comes in, until the point where the balance is fairly equal, then again there's room for harmony. There can be room for harmony, obviously it doesn't always work out like that. I noticed a huge shift when I went to my high school, which I've said before, was a third Black, a third White and a third local.

So, there are a few different themes showing up in this story that really play into how my life moves forward. One of the things I haven't talked about, is why I was at that inner-city school going to summer school. The reason is because I was just a hyper driven child. I think there might be a few reasons for that. But it did not come from my parents saying that I needed to, for instance, get into the best school.

But somehow, I don't know if there was enough in the cultural conversation, I had decided at some point, at a very, very young age, in fact, that if I didn't get into a good school, I basically was going to have a terrible life.

We moved from the Mojave Desert in California, like I said, to Hawaii when I was eight. I had to test-in to see what level I was at, in terms of arithmetic and language. I tested into the top level on everything, but math.

Now you can see, I mentioned in the last episode, why I always had a thought that I wasn't as good in math. I can see now, in hindsight, why I thought that. Because little girls are taught that at a young age. And this really confirmed it. It felt like such a failure.

I basically had a little nervous breakdown at eight, because I had already forward-planned to my senior year in high school. I had decided that in order to have the best shot at a really good school, I needed to have completed all of my math requirements. I could not have math as part of my GPA when I was a senior.

If I were to do that, if I were to complete all the math requirements by the time I was a junior, I needed to take, I think, algebra at seventh grade. Because this had set me back, I wasn't going to be able to do that. So, I worked really hard. I know, I'm listening to this and it just sounds so ridiculous. But hey, that's the truth.

So, I had worked really hard. I'd gotten back into top math classes by, I don't know, fourth, fifth, sixth grade. Oh right, part of the thing was that in order to complete it by my junior year, I would have to take one year of summer school at some point. So, I wanted to do that between I think seventh and eighth grade, or eighth and ninth, I can't remember.

That is why I was at that inner-city school, because they were the only ones to offer geometry. Like I mentioned before, being at my junior high school was really difficult for me because there was no interest in academics at that school. That really helped me see how deeply I appreciated and valued the life of the mind.

I started looking to sources outside of the school to show me that there were people that existed that also valued academics and deep thought. While I don't remember telling my parents exactly how bad it was at my junior high school, I do remember continually reintroducing the conversation about going to a private school instead. And citing academics as such an important reason for doing that.

I really, really wanted to go to Punahou, which is where Barack Obama went to school. Of course, we didn't know who Barack Obama was at that point, but it was considered a really, really good school. But it wasn't meant to be. But that desire to not be like everybody else, it kind of came back to bite me when I entered high school, because… that is when boys entered the picture.

One thing Hawaii did well, was they allowed people to move up into academic classes that weren't necessarily at their grade level. So, because I had been to summer school, when I came into high school, tested in, I was in several junior and senior classes.

By the way, I haven't mentioned this yet, but the way that I was able to leave Ewa Beach… Because the high school was known as being even worse than the junior high school. So, the way I was able to leave Ewa Beach and go to high school in Honolulu… I went to Radford, which is where Bette Midler went to school. Not at the same time, she was there before me.

But the way you could finagle that, was you would say that they offered some course that you desperately wanted to take, that wasn't available at the other high school. That course happened to be ROTC, the military class. So, I was able to go to a different school, but the price of it was that, I think it was every Thursday, or maybe it was once a month. I had to dress up in my little military uniform and go do drills on the hot asphalt.

It was so worth it. We would all take a boat to school. We would take a boat across Pearl Harbor, in order to get to a pickup point where the bus then would take a bunch of us to this high school. And when we got off the bus on the first day, there were a bunch of guys waiting around just to see who the new freshmen would be.

There were a couple football players that kind of stopped me, and they're like, “Oh, hey, what classes do you have?” They looked at my little registration card, and it turns out I was in the same class as one of these guys. I just saw his face fall. He was like, “Okay, yeah, well, welcome to Radford.” He never talked to me again.

It was just such a stigma to be the smart one. I'm sorry to say that I did not lean into that. What happened at that point, is that except in certain safe circles, I would really make an effort to not seem smart.

So, in the episode I did for advice for women in their 20s, I talked about language intonation and the way that you show up. And that's only because I experienced how it feels in your soul to not show up fully, and to try and look a certain way. For men specifically, but for others around you, in general. And how it's always soul crushing to dumb yourself down.

But one of the other ramifications of this school, other than… This was positive. I really did position myself as deeply yearning for intellectualism. But one of the other things it did, is it really had me believe that I didn't want to be like other people, for better or for worse. Because I felt so rejected by those other people, of course.

This has served me, in some ways. It's helped me look around and think critically, and dare to do differently. But at that point, one of the ways that it also came out, was that I dove headfirst into another world that I thought I valued, that would position me as so different from the kids at my junior high school.

That was the world of designer brand, label clothing, and kind of well-to-do bougie preferences. I became quite a snob. I can clearly remember myself saying things like, “Ugh, that's so tacky. That's just not classy.” I’d like to go back and strangle her. This is really one of the conversations I have with myself.

I'm like, at some point, Dylan will just be doing something that I'm completely rolling my eyes at, and I'll just, remembering myself, believe that this is just a phase. Because when I was younger, in elementary school, that really wasn't me. In fact, quite the opposite.

Because my dad was a higher rank. We were earning more money. We lived in the really nicest houses right there on the beach. And the kids around me had younger parents, so therefore, were a lower rank and couldn't afford the things that we could afford.

I went out of my way to prove that I was just one of the gang, and that I absolutely did not think I was better than anyone. That my dad's success really had nothing to do with me, it was just circumstance. But even in that, there were so many times where I kind of “othered” myself, just by the things I would say that were so different than the kids around me.

I remember once, when I was much older, I met up with a friend of mine. She told me a story that she remembered about me that always stuck out with her. And that's that for a certain birthday my mom had leased, or no, I think rented, a brand-new convertible Mercedes. The kind that Magnum, P.I. would drive around. Or did he drive a Ferrari? I'm messing this up.

But anyway, someone famous, that everyone knew about this car, was driving this kind of car, and my mom rented one for my dad for like a week or something. Somehow, I mean, it was a small base, so this got out. Apparently, what I said to her was, “Oh, yeah, it's just a rental. It's not a lease.” She had never even heard of a lease or leasing a car, or what that even meant. She just thought that was so different.

She told me about this when I, gosh, I don't know, I must have been 30. Even in her telling me this, I still got a wave of shame. I got a wave of shame that I had messed up in that way and let that slip out. That had shown me as being the snobby, rich girl. But later on, somehow I slipped into it. It was some weird defense mechanism.

So, there I was, very, very intent on wearing the top labels. If you’re curious what they were, they were Vidal Sassoon jeans, Swatch watches, Members Only jacket; we're talking full on 80s. Another thing that was popular because Dirty Dancing had just come out, were little white Keds tennis shoes. Which is right when I went on my first exchange trip to New Zealand.

I had always longed to travel, longed to experience different cultures. And my mom, which I completely understand now, had said, “It would break my heart to have you away for a year.” I just think about that now, if Dylan wanted to spend his junior year abroad, for instance. I would think, “Oh my gosh, I wouldn't miss that entire year. And I only have a couple years left with him.” So, that's really where she was.

They also told me that they couldn't afford it. But that if I could find shorter exchange trips and scholarships, that they would support that. That's exactly what I did. So, they never actually thought that I would do that, that I would find that, but I did. I actually found two exchange trips fully paid. They really couldn't say no, because it was such a great opportunity.

So, the first one that I had found was going to New Zealand. My exchange sister came over and lived with us for a few months. And then, I went back and lived with her for, I think, four months. So, we had continuity together, of a longer period of time. So, it kind of felt like a cultural exchange, a longer cultural exchange. But I was actually only there for four months.

Okay, there's one other thing I have to mention. I loved riding horses at that point, and I dreamed of being in the Olympics. When I filled out my application, I mentioned that. And whoever, on the other end in New Zealand, I guess they thought because I loved horses, I would probably love living on a farm. That was the farthest from the truth.

So, when I found out that rather than living in the capital city, Auckland, I was going to be living on a farm, I was so devastated. But luckily, of course, my exchange sister, I loved her. She's still one of my best friends. It all worked out. It was absolutely the way it should be.

But when I got there the first day, to the sheep farm, which by the way, no horses, not a single horse; it was all sheep and cattle. It was a little town of 400 people on the North Island of New Zealand. It was a very, very rural. Everybody knew everybody. I think the high school had combined a few different towns. I went to this one high school, and I think there were 300 people at the school.

So, I got there in my little acid-washed jeans and my white Keds. They wanted to take me out and kind of show me the farm, and start getting me accustomed to farm life. And they looked at my shoes, and they're just like, “Are those the only shoes you have?” “Yes.” Well, the only tennis shoes that I would be going out and doing farm work in. They said, “Okay, well, we'll have to get you some different shoes, but they'll be fine for today.”

We went out and I proceeded immediately to step into a cow pasture, and it was all muddy, because it rains a lot as well. So, my foot just sank straight down into this horrible urine and manure and mud. And when I pulled my foot out, the shoe didn't come with it. Oh, of course, because we didn't wear laces with our Keds, that was so… No, we didn't do that. So, the shoe stayed in the mud.

It was really an eye-opening, awakening experience to, “I am not in fucking Kansas anymore. Where the hell am I?” But by the end of the time there, I started to realize those people had no idea what the labels were that were on my clothing. They had no idea how exciting it was to have that kind of outfit together.

I mean, they thought the fashion must be kind of fashion forward, but they didn't know the brand names. What I realized then, that I saw echoed later on when I worked in fashion, was that so often, the clothes get made in the exact same place. And really, it literally is a label. You can have, in the same factory in China, a very high-end designer, and then something that you'll buy at Target, for instance. Produced in the same area.

There are just slight differences. Such as,… little segue here. But such as, cutting the strings off. You know the little strings that kind of come out of the seams? That human labor is really what adds up to a large part of the price that you pay in the end. And of course, the profit margins. Designer labels will take a much higher profit margin.

Anyway, in New Zealand, I just started realizing that all of these labels were completely arbitrary. It really didn't mean anything about the clothing. And that the clothing, in itself, and fashion and anything that we would put value on as a material thing, was all a choice. It was all a decision. So, by the end of the time there, I was a different person.

I was wearing dark denim, and these really thick, scratchy wool kind of coats, called Swanndri. I was wearing big, black rain boots to walk around. I was herding cattle. In fact, we have a picture of me. We would have to move the cows down the road, and we just wanted to make sure that they didn't segue into the pastures, any open pastures.

So, someone would go ahead and they'd be closing all the pasture gates, but then I would stay behind and just kind of make sure that the cattle didn't get spooked and start coming my way.

The way that you do this, the way that you keep the cows moving forward, is you wave your arms up and down. Like, from your knees all the way above your head. And you go, “Shhh,” that's it. You just say, “Shhh,” and it's enough to scare the cows. Well, not scare the cows, but keep the cows focused on moving forward rather than wanting to approach you.

I have this picture of me that was taken, and I just have the biggest smile on my face. You see hundreds of cows beyond me, on the road ahead. I should find it and put it on social, so y'all can see it. But I'm kind of looking back towards the camera, and I'm just in my element. I fucking loved it. Yeah, I loved the people, I loved everything about it. I did come back a different person.

What is so ironic, because isn't this how the universe works? Is that when I came back, I was a sophomore in high school. I happened to have a romance start up with our Italian exchange student. Well, our Italian exchange student was very much into labels and into nice clothing. The earlier me… If only he had met me a year earlier, I would have been all about that. I would have just thought he was the bee's knees.

But I actually kind of looked down on him because of his attachment to brand clothing and everything. So, there was always kind of this push-pull in our relationship. Where I was above it all, I had no interest in that. And he kept trying to impress me with things that he would buy me, or things that he would wear. It just wasn't working. So unfortunately, we kind of had a disconnect just because of the timing. But he really was a wonderful guy, and very, very good looking.

That really, I think, gets you up to speed on the Hawaii years. Which were from when I was eight years old to when I was 16. At which point, I went on my second exchange trip to Greece. Of course, there's so much that ended up coming out of that too. We will leave this story right here, right now. I'll see you next time.

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