The Daily Write: Write about giving (November 4, 2012)

I didn't even like pepperoni, so it was preposterous that this was the nickname I bequeathed on myself. Pepper for short. I tried Fir but my dad told me, in an embarrassed under-his-breath moment, that "Fir" was what some people called pubic hair. Maybe in 1953 in the army, but not in the mid-70s in a California suburb. Still, that disclosure was so uncomfortable, I quickly abandoned the notion.

For a while some of my friends actually did call me Pepper. But it always felt fake. Just like me. See, I never fit in with them. I never fit in anywhere. I was one half in California without a mom, and one half in Oregon without a dad. Back then, most kids had two parents. If they didn't it wasn't because of divorce. The fact that my folks split up when I was two-and-a-half was one of the many things that made me inferior. No self-imposed nickname was going to change that.

I did stupid things to exacerbate my differences - like sign up for German in 6th grade when all the cool kids were taking French and the not-cool but not completely ostracized were studying Spanish. As much as I wanted to conform, some part of me resisted. I thought German would get me closer to my roots as a Jew. But then when I pronounced things with a Yiddish intonation and the teacher mocked me, well, let's just say my status as a dorky outsider was reinforced.

There was no meeting of my identities. In Oregon I hung out with independent and strong minded hippie kids: Freddie who told me that someday there would be a war when the people rose up against the pigs, and that the people would be victorious, Karen who dropped acid and tried to hitchhike to Egypt while I was left behind trying to bum a ride home in a town I didn't know my way around. In California, I hung out with nerdy smart kids who came from stable homes, ate from buffets on the kitchen counter every night, and whose parents didn't yell.

I lived with a loud, bearded single father in a shitty house with no decor of which to speak. Our lawn was yellow and full of weeds and he was a counsellor. Not a mail man like my best friend's dad, or a business man like the popular kids' fathers.