When I was younger like back in elementary school, I was always jealous of the other kids in my classes. I went to catholic schools for almost my entire life, and it was interesting to say the least. The school that I went to for the first 6 years of school was Our lady of the Valley in West Orange the majority of the students were African American and with my background being mostly Caribbean I was always jealous being the minority. My mom always made my lunches and it usually consisted of a sandwhich some chips and a Juice or Ya-Hoo etc. The other kids mainly ate the school lunch which would change and sometimes be pizza or something fun. When I was younger it was pointed out to me that I didn't pronouce words like the rest of the kids either, and that bugged me. There were also things that I just couldn't relate to like the ethnic foods that the other kids would have at thanksgiving were far different from mine, I still don't even know what a peach Cobbler is. My mom never made the Cornbread or the Fried Chicken and collard greens that all the other kids were having instead we had Island food and man was it delicious.
As I got older the differences kept piling up and I was no longer jealous for not being the same as the other kids. I loved it, I was so happy that my parents weren't from the American South as so many of the other kids parents were. I realized that I was pronoucing words different than those others kids for sure, but I was doing it the right way. Not to sound like I'm cocky or anything but even if you listen to the way I speak today, I don't draw my words out or speak in slang as so many other kids my age do, and the hard thing was realizing that, this is just who I was, always. I went from being embarrassed to loving that fact that my family wasn't the typical African-American family, actually they aren't even American at all. The majority of my Family comes from Barbados, with portions being from England and Canada as well.
I do miss being in elemetary school, because those were times when there was little to worry about outside of doing well in school, and if I could do it over there is no way I would ever have been embarrassed to be different I would relish in it.  ¶ 12:50 PM