Who Am Us Anyway? (the writer's personal introduction)
I'm an English teacher. Now, before you get too far in your visualizing me as a be-spectacled pipe-smoker in tired tweed, wistfully quoting Donne and Milton, I am not that kind of English teacher. I don't teach Eng. Lit. I teach children English as a Foreign Language in Taipei, Taiwan where I have lived for more than 12 years.
As an 'ex-pat', it's interesting being outside of the mainstream of American Consciousness in a 'life laboratory' , anthropologic kind of way. I'm rarely swept up in the current 'mania'. Mainly because I might not even hear about it until years after the fact. I didn't see a 'Seinfeld' episode until it was in it's last season. 'Ali McBeal', I've seen once or twice and 'The Sopranos' about the same number of times.
I'm not implying that I have some inner strength or wisdom which allows me to 'center' myself in the maelstrom of modern life and by so doing resist the temptation to sample the inane. I'm just not being presented a 24-hour, serve-yourself buffet banquet of psycho-babble baloney, fulsome flummery, moony romance and schmaltzy twaddle.
At least, not in English. The locals, I'm sure, are dishing it out. But my command of Mandarin Chinese is, to put a glow on it, utilitarian at best. My limited vocabulary, I'm able to deliver with a nearly-native accent. Or so I'm told. But there's no way I could decipher the messages delivered in the mad, high-pitched gibber which serves as the standard sound-track of Taiwan media programming.
It's not like I'm living in yurt in Ulaanbaatur, either. This is the era of cable TV and the Internet. I get lots of input. Much of it comes from knowledgeable non-American friends and international news sources. I have no claim to a better perspective of things. I just have a different vantage point.
However, I am not a cultural orphan in self-exile who has adopted Oriental manners and dress. I have maintained my American sensibilities. I was born in America and raised by honest, hard-working Americans - Brokaw's 'Greatest Generation'. I had a paper route and learned the value of a job well done. I mowed lawns and washed cars to buy my first bicycle. I played high school football, American grid-iron. (I was awful.) I am a Chicago Bears fan, the McCaskey family aside. I once met Walter 'Sweetness' Payton, shook his hand and congratulated him on his combined yardage record. One of my 'brushes with greatness.
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