Tau Omega, but it was very unfulfilling. I had nothing in common with my “brothers” – I mean zilch.
My sweet little girlfriend Karen was also an overseas army brat and felt just as out of place as I did. Having spent the prime years of her childhood in France where her father, a US Army sergeant major, was stationed before he had retired to a tiny town in southeast Missouri, she did her last year of high school there in Missouri, where the local kids called her “Frenchie”. She was the only person I had any manner of real affinity with during those two years at ASU, which only made sense.
An “overseas brat” or “third-culture kid” is one who spends a significant time as a child in one or more cultures other than their native culture, then melds elements of those cultures with their own into a third culture. As kindred third-culture kids, Karen and I had more in common with one another than we did with kids who had spent their whole lives in America. Like most third-culture kids, after a childhood spent in other cultures, adjusting to our home country was a difficult experience almost always doomed to failure.
Having quit school after that second year and following a short three-month stint as a pseudo-hippie, I gained the dubious distinction of being the first person arrested in Arkansas for selling LSD. My dad quickly flew back from Thailand with my bail money in hand. But I spurned his generous gesture and opted for a plea bargain that garnered me a three-year sentence with the guarantee of quick commutation of the sentence to parole eligibility.
While waiting in lockup, I had volunteered to participate in the prison farm pecan harvest. I thought that the chance to get out in the field with the work crew would give me both a break from the jailhouse and the opportunity to smoke the joint I had managed to get smuggled in on a visit. There was no way I could have gotten away with lighting it up inside the cell block.
Once in the pecan orchard I looked for my chance. To relieve yourself, you had to first get permission from the guard on horseback, then go to the edge of the orchard to do your business. Having acquired the guard’s permission, I scurried to the bushes, squatted over a shallow hole made with my boot heel, pulled out my joint and started puffing.
Much to my dismay, a large black prisoner came and squatted but a few feet in front of me and commenced doing his business. He smelled my cigarette over all the other smelly distractions he had made. Turning to me, he held out his hand. With no real choice I could see but to share, I handed him the joint. He turned with it just as I heard the guard’s horse getting louder as it came closer. The man in front of me heard it as well and flipped the joint back to me as he stood up. I hid it under my foot and then realized to my horror that I had no fecal matter in my hole to show the guard my honest efforts there.
Then a clever idea hit me. I reached forward, intending only to borrow some dump from my fellow prisoner. In my haste, and due to its solid consistency, I came away with the whole damn thing. In those days, an Arkansas prison guard could get away with striking a prisoner, given the appropriate circumstances of course. This was one of those, I guess.
The guard arrived. Upon inspection, he found the black man’s hole lacking any content and struck him across his upper arm with a five-foot long hickory switch which he carried for just such occasions. All the time, he was cursing him, using a spray of racial slurs. My fellow prisoner looked down bewildered as he examined his empty hole, then glared at me, and then down at his waste matter resting in my hole. Without a word exchanged, we both continued the day’s work, me being careful to avoid close contact for fear that he would seek to avenge the excrement theft.
As the late autumn sun began to set, we made our way to the prison farm bus. When my fellow inmate got in line right behind me,
My sweet little girlfriend Karen was also an overseas army brat and felt just as out of place as I did. Having spent the prime years of her childhood in France where her father, a US Army sergeant major, was stationed before he had retired to a tiny town in southeast Missouri, she did her last year of high school there in Missouri, where the local kids called her “Frenchie”. She was the only person I had any manner of real affinity with during those two years at ASU, which only made sense.
An “overseas brat” or “third-culture kid” is one who spends a significant time as a child in one or more cultures other than their native culture, then melds elements of those cultures with their own into a third culture. As kindred third-culture kids, Karen and I had more in common with one another than we did with kids who had spent their whole lives in America. Like most third-culture kids, after a childhood spent in other cultures, adjusting to our home country was a difficult experience almost always doomed to failure.
Having quit school after that second year and following a short three-month stint as a pseudo-hippie, I gained the dubious distinction of being the first person arrested in Arkansas for selling LSD. My dad quickly flew back from Thailand with my bail money in hand. But I spurned his generous gesture and opted for a plea bargain that garnered me a three-year sentence with the guarantee of quick commutation of the sentence to parole eligibility.
While waiting in lockup, I had volunteered to participate in the prison farm pecan harvest. I thought that the chance to get out in the field with the work crew would give me both a break from the jailhouse and the opportunity to smoke the joint I had managed to get smuggled in on a visit. There was no way I could have gotten away with lighting it up inside the cell block.
Once in the pecan orchard I looked for my chance. To relieve yourself, you had to first get permission from the guard on horseback, then go to the edge of the orchard to do your business. Having acquired the guard’s permission, I scurried to the bushes, squatted over a shallow hole made with my boot heel, pulled out my joint and started puffing.
Much to my dismay, a large black prisoner came and squatted but a few feet in front of me and commenced doing his business. He smelled my cigarette over all the other smelly distractions he had made. Turning to me, he held out his hand. With no real choice I could see but to share, I handed him the joint. He turned with it just as I heard the guard’s horse getting louder as it came closer. The man in front of me heard it as well and flipped the joint back to me as he stood up. I hid it under my foot and then realized to my horror that I had no fecal matter in my hole to show the guard my honest efforts there.
Then a clever idea hit me. I reached forward, intending only to borrow some dump from my fellow prisoner. In my haste, and due to its solid consistency, I came away with the whole damn thing. In those days, an Arkansas prison guard could get away with striking a prisoner, given the appropriate circumstances of course. This was one of those, I guess.
The guard arrived. Upon inspection, he found the black man’s hole lacking any content and struck him across his upper arm with a five-foot long hickory switch which he carried for just such occasions. All the time, he was cursing him, using a spray of racial slurs. My fellow prisoner looked down bewildered as he examined his empty hole, then glared at me, and then down at his waste matter resting in my hole. Without a word exchanged, we both continued the day’s work, me being careful to avoid close contact for fear that he would seek to avenge the excrement theft.
As the late autumn sun began to set, we made our way to the prison farm bus. When my fellow inmate got in line right behind me,
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