The First Time I Felt Like an Idiot

I lived with my father’s parents for most of my childhood until I was 16 when I moved in with my Mom.

Memaw would say that my family was related to Benjamin Franklin by way of a prostitute he’d slept with. It’s a weird brag. But since I have a strong browline and with my hair in a ponytail I look like an extra from Colonial Williamsburg I always wondered if there might be some truth to it.

Later, like a year ago, I heard that my mother’s paternal family might have been related to the famous Sterling family, as in Sterling silver, but I looked it up and thats not possible. There’s no Mr. Sterling. It’s becoming more and more plausable that I come from the intersection of two retarded bloodlines, but I digress.

My sweet Memaw became convinved that we had some Native American blood in our family based off a black and white photo of her great aunt from the late 1800’s. Being ten years old I couldn’t reason this out, but at the time it seemed right. After all Memaw was the smartest person I knew and Dadaw’s drinkers nose and red complexion made him look like the Red Skins mascot in my young eyes. Maybe both sides of the family had some Native?

Memaw got her’s and Dadaw’s geneology tested and its all English-Welsh on both sides.

Now I know that this great great great aunt probably caught a good tan that summer in 1800-whatever and thats the whole mystery, but my poor Memaw needed a whimsical family myth to occupy her time with. They didn’t have pickleball in 2003.

Memaw told me we were going to meet with a tribe, she told me the name, but I think I’ve blocked it out. What I rememeber leading up to the crux of this story was that we went to a reservation to meet with a Memaw of this tribe.

I remeber the Indian Memaw looking at my Memaw like she was an idiot and feeling a strong discomfort and sense of sadness as my Memaw recounted her families history in Tennesee in Virginia and showed the Indian Memaw the black and white photo. Indian Memaw seemed ambivolent and disinterested, possibly a bit dismissive. Even then I could sense something was off in this interaction and I’d begun to doubt Memaw’s credibility as our family historian. I wanted my Memaw to drop this whole thing and get me out of this ladies house.

That’s not what happened and I was going to be the one to pay for Memaw’s naive gringo desire to not be another white American of Western European desent. She might have pioneered the trend.

A week later I was dressed up in deerskin and dancing in a local tribal celibration. We danced in a circle for 20 or so minutes, maybe longer. I was alone with what felt like 100 natives singing and dancing around me. No one taught me any songs or dances. I tried my best to mimic what others were doing and blend in. I probably didn’t. I tried sound out what they were chanting and probably sounded like I was retarded because I was too young to consciously mock them in a meaningful way.

Overall I hated the whole experience. That’s the first time I felt like an idiot.

This photo was taken that day and ened up on the front cover of the local news paper. My grandma worked at the paper which is how she got this print. I have the newspaper in a stack of family photos somewhere.

Now that Memaw has the facts about her ethnicity and our family history she thinks it’s still cute that I got to dance with the Indians. If she brings it up I laugh and play along like it was really fun. I’m pretty sure that’s when I started getting axious in large groups for a long time after this. It’s clicking in my mind as I think about it.