On Being Extraordinarily Average

Sitting in Patient Centered Medicine (one of the "talk about your feelings" Medical School classes which deserves a post of its own), I flashed back to the 7th grade. English class that year was the first time I really struggled with school. I was a nerd among nerds that never really worried about how I was doing in school because I was doing fine; I knew nothing else. 7th grade english changed all that. While I struggled with diagramming sentences and prepositional phrases, the biggest blow to my academic career up until that moment came when we had to present about the "culture of our family". I live in New Jersey; everyone has some unique culture. Everyone that is, except apparently me. Priya talked about Hindu traditions of her Indian family, and Caryl about her Filipino background, and even the "white" kids talked about immigrants from Ireland during the potato famine. I remember asking my mom what we were and she told me I was Heinz 57 Varities. A little of everything, not enough of anything. The truth is, we can trace my family back to the Revolutionary War. While there are some later immigrants from Germany and Scotland, none of it was ever culturally significant enough to have any impact on my family. Naturally, I received a C because my teacher did not understand what made my family special. Neither did I!

We are blue collar. My parents generation has 4 kids on one side, 3 on the other and all the grandkids are between the ages of 19 and 26. This means we don't have babies at Christmas or Easter. We haven't had a wedding yet and really no funerals either. We are average, typical, American. Flash back to sitting in class and the teacher asks us to go around and tell about when our families came to this country. It is medical school. Half the room is from Asia/India and is either first or second generation. Without fail, everyone in the room came to this country in the early 1900's or earlier. And then there is me with my family from the Revolutionary War and everyone gives this bewildered look and I shrug my shoulders. My ethnicity is American. That is me, Heinz 57 varieties.

Which brings me to this Christmas when a very complicated bit of extended family came to Christmas and brought their beautiful baby girl, Lily. This was a very new experience for all of us because we haven't had babies at Christmas in years. O how we missed babies! My mom said, "Don't smell the baby, she's contagious!" Well, we caught baby fever, even my dad!

We haven't learned the cure for baby fever yet in school

Lily was adorable and gave me the opportunity to take some great pictures, because I never get to see people under the age of 20 in medical school and let's face it: people like to see innocent little faces instead of stressed out medstudents. Okay, maybe I do occasionally see little people but of course I'm not about to go taking pictures in the grocery store! I need more babies in my life. I'll have to recruit someone to get on that. For now I'll have to be satisfied with seeing this adorable face once in a while.

In the end, we are so average, we are unique. And I'm okay with that.