Three Questions TCKs Hate

As a TCK, I’m used to people asking me questions.  Especially when they find out that I’ve lived out of the country.  Some of these are intelligent questions that I enjoy answering.  “What’s your favorite Polish food?”  “How many languages can you speak?”  “How do you say this in this language?”  And then, of course, there the ones that leave me torn between the desires to laugh out loud or cry.  “Did you live in an igloo?”  “Do you know what email is?”  “Do they have cars where you come from?”  Sometimes, when I’ve finally had it with the absurd questions, I’m highly tempted to tell people (with a perfectly straight face) that I live in a house made of snow with my pet polar bear in a place where everyone dresses in animal skins and goes ice-fishing on the weekends and dinner consists of whichever student did the poorest on their math exam.  But, unfortunately, my conscience won’t permit it.  So instead I just answer politely, and later when the person is finally gone I relay the story to my parents and we all laugh until we cry.  A wise person once said that there are no stupid questions, only stupid people who ask questions.  On days like that I’m inclined to agree. 

Yes, TCKs are used to being asked questions.  But there are three of them, particularly for missionary kids, that we hate above all others.  The first of them, ironically enough, is the one we get asked the most.  This is the dreaded origin question, the one that every new student gets asked about five hundred times on their first day.  “Where are you from?”  For someone who has lived in the same place their entire life, this question is fairly simple.  But for a kid who needs more than one hand to count the times they’ve moved and whose list of former places of residence includes two countries or more, answering that simple question quickly becomes a nightmare. 

Most TCKs I know, myself included, have no set answer to that question.  Instead, our answer is determined by the situation.  As soon as someone asks us the dreaded question we immediately begin a dizzying round of calculations.  “How well do I know this person?  How often am I likely to be around them in the near future?  How much time do I have to tell my story?  How much of it do they actually want to hear?  How much of it will they understand?  How much do I even want them to know?  Do I tell them where I was born, where my parents consider home, where I consider home, or just the last place I lived?  Do they expect me to give a certain answer?  Do I feel like answering more questions if they start asking, or should I just tell them what they want to hear?”  If that isn’t enough, each of these questions has to be answered and evaluated and all of them pulled together into a concrete verbal answer in about three seconds or less if we want to avoid looking like mute idiots.  Now you know why we sometimes stutter or our eyes glaze over when someone asks. 

The main problem with this question, however, is not how many options are available for us to use as answers.  The real problem is simply that half the time TCKs don’t even know where they consider to be home.  Our birth certificates say one thing, but our hearts say another.  So which of those is it?  There simply is no easy answer.  That doesn’t mean you should never ask a TCK where they’re from.  Just make sure you have sufficient time for us to fully answer the question.  And don’t get frustrated if it takes us five minutes to come up with an answer that then takes ten minutes to explain.  The fact that we can give you an answer at all is pretty remarkable. 

The second question that can quickly become a problem is “Which place do you like better?”  Now this question is fine if it comes from someone who is close to us or has a similar background or is interested in the profession that took us to that place or is just genuinely curious.  The problem comes in when the asker is an overly patriotic person who has obviously never left the country (possibly even their own county) and clearly expects you to answer the question with “America.”  I cannot even begin to describe how infuriating that is.  When asking this question of a TCK it is absolutely vital to remember that we’re green people at heart.  There is definitely some blue in there, but some of us are totally convinced that we should have been born yellow.  And the truth is, we may very possibly love our second country far more than we love America.  It isn’t a reason to get offended.  It’s just who we are. 

Myself, I would usually far rather be in Poland.  As much as I respect the ideals that America was founded on, I find the country we have become to be slightly over-rated.  I miss good Polish food that wasn’t drowning in grease or salt.  I miss the beautiful architecture and the sheer magic of a world where to call a building “old” meant it had been around since the middle ages.  I miss the cobblestone streets and the public transportation.  I miss the beauty of being able to listen to a flurry of different languages all around me without my brain being overloaded by the ability to understand every single word.  Even as I write this paragraph I find myself getting a bit emotional.  Poland may not be my birth country, but I love it and its people in the way one loves an old and dear friend. 

And yet I am a Third Culture Kid.  We have been raised between two cultures, and regardless of how we feel in our hearts many of us are convinced that by choosing a side we are somehow betraying someone.  To choose our “foreign” country is to betray our extended family and the expectations of our birth culture.  But to choose America is to betray the people and places that we consider home.  Either way, we lose. 

Keep in mind that the problem is not the question.  The problem is how it is presented.  A genuinely curious question will give a TCK a chance to truly express their heart and will probably earn you their friendship as a result.  But a tone that clearly expects them to choose a particular answer will do more harm than good.  I have seen TCKs mentally shut down or even write a person off entirely for asking the question in a way that is clearly waiting for a particular answer.  Be open.  Be willing to listen to whatever answer we give instead of automatically writing us off as unpatriotic.  Because while most TCKs crave belonging above all else, the thing we want second is someone who will simply listen to us.  Someone who will at least try to understand, even if they never really do.  Someone who won’t try to make us blue or yellow, but who will instead accept us for the people that we are, green shirts and all. 

But the question that most TCKs, especially missionary kids, hate the worst is “Aren’t you glad to be home?”  After the last few paragraphs, you can probably see the fatal flaw with this question.  It makes the automatic assumption that the kid in question thinks of wherever they currently are as home.  But that isn’t necessarily the case.  And when it isn’t, this question doesn’t help matters.  More often than not it just worsens any homesickness we’re already feeling.  Sometimes is may even make us feel guilty.  Are we supposed to think of America as home?  Why don’t we?  Does that make us bad people?  Unless you really have managed to hit the nail on the head and this kid does in fact consider America to be home, this question will only make them feel more alienated and out of place than they probably already do. 

Personally, my answer to this question is always a loud “No.”  Now I may not actually voice that answer out loud depending on the situation.  But that’s still my answer.  My reason?  I don’t think of America as home anymore.  I don’t necessarily hate it.  I just have days where I don’t feel like I fit, days when I’d rather be anywhere else but here.  As Thousand Foot Krutch says in one of their songs, “This place is many things, but I can’t call it home.”  In fact, some days I don’t even know where home is.  Some days I love where I am.  Other days I would give anything to go back to Poland. 

But how can I explain that to someone who has never left the country?  How can I make them understand that I get a headache from sitting in a loud cafeteria where I can understand every word of every conversation surrounding me?  How do I explain the annoyance of having to drive to Wal-Mart when I’m suddenly craving a good candy bar?  How can I make people understand how much I miss the beauty of standing on a balcony that looks out on of a string of other cement apartment buildings?  The truth is, I can’t. 

Maybe that’s why that question can cut so deep sometimes.  Because it takes everything I feel for that beautiful country and pretends none of it exists.  It assumes that just because my passport says United States of America that I am somehow obligated to walk around proclaiming how much I love my birth country.  It assumes that the words on my birth certificate are somehow more meaningful and important than what I feel in my heart.  And that thought is crushing.  That isn’t the intention, of course.  Nobody who asks that question is ever out to make a TCK feel bad.  But regardless of their intentions, that’s often the result. 

The moral of the story, then, is to make no assumptions.  Don’t assume that you know us or where we consider home.  And don’t get tired of listening to us talk about that place either.  They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  Well, the way to a TCK’s is through the country they consider home.  We are who we are because of where we’ve been.  Blue doesn’t become green unless you throw in the yellow.  So if you really want to know us, you’ll have to take it all.

 

-Ash