Oddly enough, I do not have the fortune to call East Tennessee my hometown in the sense that I was raised here. The first fourteen years of my life were spent mostly two modest hours away in glorious suburban Murfreesboro, near Nashville. To my disbelief, I will shortly be marking off nine years since my arrival in the city whose claim to fame is the invention of Mountain Dew, the 1982 World’s Fair, and Johnny Knoxville.
Still, I manage to get asked constantly where I’m from as though I have an exotic foreign accent. Almost flattered, yet cheeks burning, I naturally reply that I’m from Knoxville. Culturally, I identify more with this city than the town of my earlier years. I think it’s because I subconsciously associate Middle Tennessee with the awkwardness of middle school. Plus, as a stubborn liberal who admits he is tiring of trying to effectuate change from within, the farther northeast I am geographically, the better.
In the idealism of my mind, I’m either a resident of Manhattan or maybe even a French Canadian although these fantasies have yet to manifest in my behavior probably much to zhe relief of zhe people active in my life.