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Community Chest Adrienne Janney |
I noticed something the last time I was home.
They're normal, the people there.
If you're wondering whether I'm implying that you people aren't normal - you're right.
No offense.
What the hell are you talking about, Janney?
Really, the first time I came to Ann Arbor, I thought it was Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Ann Arborites are a little, well, scary.
Take a supermarket. Any supermarket. (No, Meijer's does not count.) Walk in. Look around. What do you see?
Uh-huh. I told you.
Like, how come the Kroger in Ann Arbor doesn't stock kosher marshmallows - and the Kroger in Toledo, Ohio does? Compare the Jewish populations of both cities. Ann Arbor's percentage is much higher. What's wrong with these people?
Oh, and it's Christmas time. So every locale, home and abroad, has the obligatory tinsel and mistletoe (don't get caught by that stuff - it's very dangerous, I can tell you, especially at parties) and red ribbons. And the highly obligatory, guilt-motivated, blue-and-white Happy Hanukkah trinkets.
When I first arrived here, I was grateful that store clerks and classmates didn't bombard me with Christmas spirit.
Now it gets on my nerves. It's fake.
Ann Arbor is trying to deny she's really a Michigander. She doesn't even say "pop." A soda? You mean a club soda? You want some baking soda? What's a lollipop, sucker? Put your palm up and show me where you're from, stranger.
Sure, I'd like to live in PC-land, but not with a bunch of fools who are vegetarians but eat chicken but don't eat eggs but wear leather. Get an identity.
Take the grocery store in Lambertville, Mich., a satellite of Toledo. (Lambertville boasts multiple banks and gas stations, though she has only one real grocery store.) Lambertville, Mich. - home of normality. OK, sort of. But at least you get a normal variance. Lambertvillians (I like that) look at me like I'm weird. I want to stand up on the checkout and announce, "No, really, I'm one of you. I just went away to college. I was born around here, really. My mother lives here. Please don't lynch me -"
You see, they notice that even though I'm in jeans and a sweater, my jewelry is a little too carefully chosen, my apparel a little too engineered, my makeup a shade too dark, my sneakers a little too pink.
I certainly don't look like a farm girl.
Teen-agers, of course, look primped wherever you are. But at their age, it's OK to spend two hours doing your hair in the morning. After all, you're still developing your outer self-concept, where letter jackets and brand-new sneakers are signs of status.
Although I am at home here, the Ann Arbor crowd is intimidating, with its hard lines and hard tans and hard-core diversity. At home, they wear the Teamsters logo across the back of their shiny jackets instead of the Reeses logo stretched across their nonexistent chests. They carry pocketbooks, briefcases and lunchboxes instead of overpriced, slightly useless backpacks.
At home they work hard all day. Here they work out and party hard.
Ann Arborites, particularly students, strive to get noticed. Black hair, black lipstick, black combat boots, black trench coat. Flared jeans, long hair, nose ring, ugly '70s shirt. Blue jeans, button-up plaid, expensive wristwatch, leather shoes, flat-top haircut. Do you shave your legs or are you a lipstick feminist? Are you a dedicated conformist or a certified freak?
Guess what. There are more wherever that came from. There are at least 10 copies of you, whoever you are. Sorry.
I guess we haven't figured out inside well enough yet to drop the outside.
Of course, Ann Arbor has a hierarchy of high maintenance. Seniors can always spot the freshmen. In September, a recently graduated friend of mine made the 10-minute trek to my apartment, bombarded by strange looks. When she arrived, she said, "I'd forgotten about the freshmen, the ones who don't know that in Ann Arbor you can go outside with your hair wet and whatever is in the bottom of your closet." (Actually, I dare not brave the bottom of my closet. I think it would swallow me whole. Tangent over.) The seniors, liberated by their proximity to bona fide adulthood, strut their wardrobe liberation like the freshmen strut their new clothes.
At home, I observe comforting sameness - the same sameness that used to render me bored and restless. It is not land of the beautiful and fashionably attired people. Their uniqueness comes in their postures, their smiles, their faces, their laughs.
That's style.
And their experiences, their hardships, their political views - that's character. That's diversity.
- Adrienne Janney can be reached over e-mail at pantheon@umich.edu.