Burnt Cracker

All my life I was seen as “different” by my family and so called friends. The reason? My upbringing of course! As a black kid whose father was in the military, I moved around a lot and experienced different cultures, accents, foods etc that other kids living a stationary life did not experience. Due to this, I never got a chance to develop solid childhood friends, I never developed a regional “accent”. This caused me a great deal of lifelong problems.

You see, I developed my own likes and interests. I had a few associates so I read a lot, wrote a lot, and I tried my best to pronounce words correctly and learn their definitions so that I could utilize them in daily conversations. I loved pro wrestling, comic books, video games and novels. I didn’t realize those were negative traits until I moved to the south.

“Burnt cracker!” That was shouted to me quite a few times throughout high school. Not by white kids, but black kids. Kids that shared my same skin color, kids that shared my same heritage, treated me like an outcast because I “sounded too white,” because I “liked white things,” and because I “have a dad” (yes, that really was said to me, I was too white because my mom and dad were still together and in my life). Therefore, since white people were known as “crackers” I, being black, was a “burnt” one. That left me in an ugly position in the school social hierarchy. I wasn’t a jock because I didn’t like sports. I wasn’t a nerd necessarily, because my grades were average at best, plus; the nerds in an attempt to be cool, didn’t want to be seen associating with me. I wasn’t accepted by the cool kids because I acted too white for them. I wasn’t accepted by the cool white kids, because they wanted to be accepted by the cool black kids and associating with me would kill that for them.

So, out of a school with over one thousand students, I was alone. I felt in a way, that my “people” had turned their backs on me. In turn, I turned my back on them. I don’t associate with people long nor do I value friendships like I may have if things were different.

My loneliness has brought me more peace then trying to fit in.