State of confusion

College is basically just four years of people asking you where you’re from, and every time anyone asks me where I’m from I have the absolute privilege of telling them I'm from Delaware.

Cue applause.

For most people at Brown, I’m the first Delawarean they’ve ever met. (I’m also probably the last Delawarean they’ll ever meet, but when I say that it sounds like a threat.) People know next to nothing about our rich history: how we have no sales tax, how our cancer rate is higher than the national average because of our chemical plants, how we were the very first state to ratify the Constitution, and how we still proudly bear/cling to the “First State” nickname, because it’s pretty much all we’ve got. On the back of Delaware’s state coin is Caesar Rodney, a legislator who rode a horse 70 miles in a nighttime thunderstorm while he was dying of facial cancer just so Delaware could become a state in a timely fashion. I’m pretty sure that was 70% patriotism and 30% the knowledge that Delaware was going to need something, anything to brag about for the next 240 years. 

But that’s a little obscure, and no one who has learned that I’m from Delaware has said, “Oh, of course! Caesar Rodney! The horse guy! I love him.” In real life, responses to “I’m from Delaware” tend to run something like this:

• “Why?”
• “I didn’t think you were real!”
• “I drove through Delaware once.”
• “Wait… *laughs* …really?”
• “My brother threw up in Delaware once.”
• “Why?”
• *utter silence as conversation quietly dies*
• “Joe Biden!”
• “Oh! Do you know [name of person that of course I don’t know because it’s not a four-person cult it’s a U.S. STATE]
• “What state is that in?”

The pervading attitude of bewilderment has made me a tiny bit defensive, and I’m liable to whip out my Delaware fast facts if anyone makes a disparaging remark about my home territory: The country’s first female astronomer was from Delaware. Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit was made in Delaware. Google, Coca-Cola, and Facebook are incorporated in Delaware. Aubrey Plaza and Teri Polo and Dr. Oz are from Delaware. And Caesar freakin’ Rodney, Mr “It’s Gonna Take More Than Thunder And Face Cancer To Stop This Horse” himself, was from Delaware. 

In some ways, it’s a perk to be from Nowhere, U.S.A., especially at school. It becomes a quirky talking point in a way that big cities can’t be. When two people from Los Angeles see each other at Brown, they don’t freeze, point at each other, and shout “Whoaaaaa!” for a while. But that’s what I would do if I ever met anyone from Delaware around here. And when a TV show mentions New York City, New Yorkers don’t jump out of their seats and shout “HEY!!” but I get to do that. And now that I live elsewhere, coming back home has a special resonance that makes me proud to be a First Stater.

It’s actually the one place on Earth where people don’t look at you funny when you say you’re from Delaware.

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