Forced to Grow Up

Now that I have begun battle against the dark arts I’ve begun to analyze my upbringing. Beginning this process I asked myself two questions: Why am I who I am today? How has the media shaped me to be who I am? By giving an abridged history of my life I hope to give you my perspective of what it means to come of age in the media’s eyes.

In the Big Apple, that’s New York City(NYC) for you tourists, is where I had my upbringing. Those cold streets filled with trash and huge rats that come out at night, yes, people, they really do exist. It’s not completely true, about me growing up in NYC, but keep reading to find out more. I was born at Columbia Presbyterian hospital in NYC on August 8th 1996; my father put it best when he said I had a look of “What the hell is going on here?” as I was brought into this world. Now I’m not going to give you my life story, but I needed somewhere to start and felt my birth would be the best place to begin. From the hospital, I went home, more accurately to my 1st home, the one on top of Manhattan, and when I say the top I mean the top. That’s Inwood Heights. Inwood is the Latin American mecca of Manhattan. Looking for traditional Latin food made the same way momma did? Then go there. Now I don’t have many memories from that house because I was really young. What I do remember Is one year around Christmas my brother and I made a list of things we wanted. Both of us had watched a lot of TV, more specifically, Christmas movies such as Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, The Santa Clause and Olive The Other Reindeer because ‘tis the season. Every movie showed a family coming together to celebrate the Christmas holiday with gifts. The kids would mail off their Santa Claus letters and Santa would respond with bringing them toys. Now it was our turn to fulfil this Christmas tradition by making a list of toys. We went to the first place that offers information: the television. Commercial after commercial, our lists became longer and longer. The kids on the television, all white from what I remember, looked happy. I wanted that happiness and thought asking Santa for what they had would make me feel the same way. The funny thing is that my parents didn’t follow that tradition at all. We would spend Christmas making food together and celebrating in our own way.  I never got the toys or anything for that matter, but I did get a kiss from mom and dad. I didn’t grow up believing in Santa because my parents didn’t want to lie to me. It actually makes sense to me now. How could a fairly large man come to my non-existent chimney and give me presents that I never got? It was preposterous. Christmas in my family was spent with family and food, not falling back into consumer culture. I ended that year falling asleep in my parents’ arms with my brother. I still hold onto that tradition of eating with family and being with the ones you love instead of buying a gift that they will forget about.

Jumping ahead to my final year in elementary school, I started to notice that I was changing. I was comfortable with what I didn’t know. My appetite increased and hair appeared in places it hadn’t before. I guess you could say “That’s when the plumbing starts to work.” If you haven’t already guessed, puberty is what I’m trying to get at. I was happy and frankly didn’t care that I was changing. I could finally challenge Anthony to an eating contest, only to lose. It was sweet, but then one day around spring time I had to go to a mandatory after school program. It was called “The Boy/Girls Project,” which still makes me cringe. I was a project to these people! Me, a fifth grader, was part of some city wide experiment that would begin to teach kids about their changing bodies. The girls and the guys were separated into two groups; the guys went to the gym, and the girls stayed in the classroom. We were told that we had no control on what was going to happen and the best choice we had would be to listen to my middle-aged gym teacher. How could a guy with a fanny-pack, ponytail and shorts so short one would be mortified to even think of wearing them, teach me about my body? Yes, this was the guy who taught me about “the birds and the bees.” His name was Teddy. On the first day he mentioned the word penis and I swear to God I’ve never seen a group of guys laugh so hard and long (no pun intended) about the word penis. I mean, come on! But alas, I was one of those guys laughing hysterically. Teddy was not amused. He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get a few words in between our laughter, but failed. We ended our first day with Teddy yelling at us. He told us we needed to be mature because it was part of growing up. Everyday for the weeks until graduation we sat through these seminars with Teddy. We were young and immature, and penis jokes were funny. It took a while for us to make it through bouts of laughter. You can only laugh about the word penis for so long before it becomes boring.  By the end of my time at the boys/girls project I had a better understanding of what was happening to my body. The more powerful message that I took away from this program was that adults have the answers to what is happening to my body. My class was generalized into two categories: boys and girls. Somehow the people I had grown up with had been put on a different team and there was no trading in between or else be bombarded with name-calling and sometimes physical abuse. The friendships I had formed with girls began to fall apart. Recess was no longer a playground but a battlefield between the genders. All because a mandatory afternoon program categorized us. By separating us into two rooms it physically showed a gender expectation as to what each were supposed to do. The boys were sent to the gym because it’s their stereotype to be jocks. The girls stayed in the classroom because it was their stereotype for them to be studious and quiet. This feeling transitioned out of school and into the streets of NYC. We could no longer hang out on the weekends together and passing by each other outside of school was awkward. It stayed like this until I went to middle school in the Adirondacks.

It wasn’t until I left New York City that I realized how much I dislike it. Now don’t get me wrong, NYC is home, but when I am older I will be moving far away from it. I left the city for a small boarding school named North Country School (NCS). This school preserved my childhood, making it last just a little bit longer. I went back in time to the days when boys and girls were best friends without anything else attached to the meaning friend. Where Christmas time was spent together with your dorm. I had a family away from home; it was pure ecstasy how amazing life was. At this school, I was introduced to climbing mountains, rock climbing, ice climbing, telemark skiing, stage lighting, leadership and so much more the list could keep going, but I’m sure you get the point, it was a lot. I was growing more from these experiences than I ever would have living in NYC. I remember a time going up to the schools not so secret crag named Daves’ Crag named after one of the greatest athletes I know to this day. I went up with Larry Robjent for a weekend event to climb some rock. You know just an average weekend at NCS. I spent that day learning about my favorite band to this day, Phish, Theater and most importantly a new way of life…”Ditthadhammasukhavihari.” Now I don’t know if it really is a word or even what language it comes from but this smorgasbord of letters changed my way of life. The meaning is “Dwelling happily in the present moment.” I knew this word would forever be the definition of what NCS meant to me. I was happy while I was there, because we had almost no influence from the outside world we were there to be there. I honestly didn’t care what was happening in the “real world.” When it was time to head back into the real world, it was like I was being torn away from my soul, but NYC is home, so I had to go back. So many things had changed since I was gone. New movies come out and I hadn’t even heard of them.  It was weird. I saw buildings again… the tallest things I saw were mountains at NCS. My friends had girlfriends and followed the latest trends in their school. They stayed on top of it or else their social life would stay on top of them. Now please understand that during my time living these moments with my friends I didn’t internalize what was happening. It was much later in life when I had an opportunity to look back on this that It was this clear to me. North Country school gave me a different perspective on NYC, it changed my view on life.

Now that I’ve had time to look back on everything, I realized that so much has changed. At first I was stuck in a mediated life without even realizing it. I felt that I had to fit into a Christmas culture because the television showed me what Christmas was supposed to be. When I left NYC for NCS I broke free from a mediated life revolving around the television. I was able to climb over the gender wall that Teddy built during my time at The Boys/Girls Project. By spending hours climbing at the crag with girls and taking turns belaying each other. I believe that i’ve left the mediated life, but who knows I could be back on the tracks without even realizing.