We all have them, whether we want to admit it or not. Politics are so engrained within our culture, and along with the “us versus them” attitude comes an accompanying “these people feel X” assumption.
—
When I was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (or the UP, as locals call it) earlier this trip, I had a man tell me I walked like a leftie.
The interaction went like this:
I walked into a bar in Ontonagon on a Wednesday evening — no makeup, shorts and a t-shirt, nothing particularly notable about me or my surroundings, in all honesty. I had just made it into town, and was trying to get the lay of the land before conducting interviews the next day.
I sat down at the end of the bar, ordered a Miller Lite, and set about my typical “eavesdrop and worm my way into someone’s conversation” strategy I’ve now perfected at bars across the US. At that point, though, I’d been on the road for barely two weeks, so the entire experience was rather unfamiliar.
Through this process, though, I continually made eye contact with a guy at the end of the bar who was talking to the man sitting next to him. Eventually, he roped me into the conversation and we hit it off, covering what he does and why he was there, and what I did and why I was there.
These connections, I’ve often said, are one of my favorite parts of this project. I love when I find that common ground with a stranger and spark an interesting conversation that I think about even weeks later.
The topic and goal of my project means most people typically will ask me one of two things (or often, both): how are you paying for this endeavor? and but where do you sit, like…politically?
On a bad day, I often want to holler “NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS” to both, but because bad days are luckily few and far between — and my parents raised me with inherent respect and politeness — it’s more often: “with personal savings and the donations of individual donors” and “somewhat in the middle, I take things from both sides.”
This guy at the end of the bar was no different. As we wound our way through the nitty gritty of the project, him asking about the what, where, when and – heck, why – we made it to the secondary question. He looked me up and down across the bar with a discerning look on his face and asked “okay, but — what side do you fall on? Like, politically.”
I smiled and told him what I just wrote to you, that I’m pretty much in the middle and take things from both sides. I’ve always been too liberal for my parents [true] and too conservative for my friends [double true], which is a juxtaposition that I’ve found many people understand.
He looked at me again, narrowing his eye and taking me in. There a was a long pause, to which I quipped, “What? Does that surprise you?”
“Yeah, it does,” he admitted.
“Why?” I asked, curious to know. I’d recently come from Detroit, where I was seen as a “white do-gooder,” so the idea of how I was perceived stood pretty top of mind.
“Well,” he said with another long pause. “You just walk like a leftie.”
I laughed, a sharp guffaw that I tried to masque with a more palatable giggle. “What does that even mean?” I asked, trying to gauge how I appeared from where he sat.
He leaned back against the hightop chair, and sighed. “You just,” he said, waving his hand dismissively in my direction, “walk like a leftie. I don’t know, you came in here and I just… I just knew what you were all about.”
“But this is surprising to me,” he quickly followed up. “Really surprising, and frankly, really good.”
I leaned back in my own chair to digest what he’d just said. “But was it like, really how I walk? Or how I talk? How I carry myself?”
He shrugged, considering. “I don’t know,” he said with a pause. “You just…were.”
No amount of pushing seemed to lead to a more clarifying answer, so I let it be and moved the conversation along, back to politics and work and community and what the heck there is to do in a small town on a Wednesday night.
But I still think about it and wonder — do I walk like a leftie? And honestly, what does that even mean?
—
Before I hit the road, I had plenty of expectations for the trip and plenty of expectations for the people I would meet along the way. Watching and studying current events as a casual (and sometimes voracious) observer over the past few years have cemented ideas in my own head, and these assumptions have reared their head time and time again.
And time and time again, I’m pushed to re-write them. To rewire my own expectations because not a single person I’ve met in the past 87 days (and I’ve met quite a few!) have ever filled all of the blanks inside my head. We’re far more dynamic than that, each with our own unique thoughts, dreams, pasts and futures.
When I meet someone and think “I know how you’re going to act,” making a split-second judgement based on their appearance or our location or any variety of factors, I’m nearly immediately forced to humble myself. Because when I take a deep breath, open my mind and heart, and actually listen to the person sitting in front of me, people never fail to surprise and inspire me. They turn my own expectations to the side and bring in something better than i could’ve ever imagined.
Humans are unique, captivating, and, if you look closely enough, endlessly surprising. One-second observations like “you walk like a leftie” are constantly turned on their heads — for him, yes, but also for me.
