my derogatory geography lesson

I had my last official show-and-tell in may of 1990. I was in third grade, in kalamazoo public schools. my show-and-tell object? a handful of pictures of my new house... in portage.

anyone reading who doesn't know the difference between the two, I'm sure you can relate somehow through this description: they are of equal size and are equally pretty. but they are two different worlds.

portage grew out of kalamazoo as sort of a separate suburb... a whiter, quieter, more affluent suburb. since the two were officially declared separate cities about half a century ago, this distinction has held true - in the stereotyping done by residents and lawmakers alike. in fact, part of the reason my mom decided to move us to portage was because the school system was "better."

knowing of these mild stereotypes, I thought, as my nine-year-old self, that I was instantly going to turn into a rich snob. to keep this from happening, I quickly told everyone in my new area that I was from kalamazoo. I was pretty sure they looked at me just a little differently for it, and I was okay with that. I have never been anything but proud of being from kalamazoo: it's got a funny name. it's where I was born, it's where my parents grew up. it's where I feel instantly comfortable upon seeing the old, and instantly uncomfortable upon seeing the new. it's where I got lost in college, because it's got more one-way streets than a town of its size should. kalamazoo is an adventure to drive through, walk in, and pronounce. portage, with all of its sprawl and gridded streets and pretty shopping centers, sometimes can't compare to the mall city.

when asked where I'm from, by michiganders or anyone else, I always say kalamazoo. only if someone says that they've got family there or they've been there do I make the distinction that my mom's current house, where I spent almost a decade of my adolescent life, is in portage. in truth, I lived in kalamazoo for about three more years total than in portage, simply because of attending college at WMU.

those last four years earnestly spent in kalamazoo, at western, exposed me to a funny set of people: east siders. as in, people from the east side of the lower peninsula, specifically from the detroit/ann arbor metro areas, who are almost as quick as st louisans to ask which high school you attended. I never understood all of their stereotypes or neighborhood biases, but I didn't really need to. it didn't apply to me; the kalamazoo/portage thing was outside of their pervue and I simply became another local, another student, another sorority girl. and sure, my friends picked up, whether through older family members, older students, or personal experience, that there were neighborhoods in kalamazoo that weren't necessarily safe or that certain parts of town were "better" than others. but really, most of their experiences were had in areas within a 2-mile radius of the center of campus. I grew up outside of that radius. I didn't bother their stereotypes, and I didn't let them in on ours.

...save that one time I was a "grosse pointe soccer mom" for halloween. but we won't get into that right now.

what we will get into is how offended I got by a fellow michigander's "view" of kalamazoo at the bar last night.

this guy seemed harmless: a supervisor from the whole foods store in troy, roughly my age, with family in st louis, and a disaffected but friendly manner about him. when I mentioned that I was from kalamazoo, he told me that he'd lived there with a girl for a year, working as a cook in a restaurant where I used to play cards. and then he said it, the most off-putting thing someone's said to me in a long time, and the entire reason for my sing-song praises of kalamazoo today: he called it the "colon" of michigan.

what?

I've never heard that before. I was so confused, and it must've shown on my face, because he instantly went off on a tangent about how he'd been robbed, and beaten up, and had things stolen, and had an overall shitty time in kalamazoo, and really, how everyone in the state thinks it's a dirty little town that makes dying a slow death look appealing.

our conversation ended shortly thereafter. I mean, all I could do was say, oh, really? wow, I grew up there and that never happened to me, or any of my close friends. this didn't please him, as I suspect he was looking for an ally in calling the city out for its shittiness, or for someone to validate his I-was-dumped-in-a-strange-city-so-pity-me opinion. and I wasn't excited to feel like I had to defend my hometown in front of a table full of people who've never set foot there.

I realize that people have biases, that people have different experiences. my view of the phoenix and st louis metropolitan areas are completely different than the views of my friends who grew up in those towns. and I know some of the stereotypes, some of which I tend to buy into or agree with, and some of which I do not. but at least I have enough tact to refrain from making such generalized statements when I have no idea how the friend or other residents feels about those stereotypes. so maybe it's a lesson learned yet again: keep your opinions to yourself, and I'll do the same. I think that we'll both hurt less in the end.