Feeling like a foreigner

While I was in England, I rarely felt more foreign than when English people where discussing minor celebrities. These are the kinds of people who British people would know from television or radio or movies...the kind of people who's faces are recognized as character actors. People who might be known more for being in the tabloids than for anything else. In essence, the kind of people who make up some of the more mundane threads from which we weave the fabric of our lives.

I was often lost when people would talk about these minor celebrities because it always felt like a very comfortable conversation. Everyone shared a minor bond...except me...I had no connection to minor character actors from 1980's television shows...in fact, I didn't even have a bond to the television shows themselves. The most unsettling thing was that I felt as if I'd had the same conversations thousands of times before, but for some reason I was lost in that particular discussion.

All of this is prelude to the fact that this really hit home to me this morning. After spending nearly 3 years in England, during which time I started to learn who these people are, what they are known for and started to recognize a new set of threads which I could weave into my life, I was put back into the old place, where those threads no longer mattered. I was a pretty big foreigner during these conversations in England, but I'm an even bigger foreigner when I try to talk about these people in America...

I can tell that the people I talk with are befuddled by my references...which is more unsettling in it's own way than when I was befuddled by other peoples references.