Word: freedonian
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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First, a confession: despite what I may have told you in September 2001, I am not now, and never have been, Freedonian. Freedonia, as you may recall, is the fictional country Groucho Marx rules in Duck Soup; for a few weeks at the beginning of freshman year, I claimed it, with a straight face, as my homeland. Because Harvard first-years are loath to admit their ignorance, my declaration of citizenship went mostly unchallenged. Sometimes my fellow first-years, brows furrowed, would ask where Freedonia was, again, and—because these conversations generally took place over dinner in Annenberg?...
Like so much else I did during my first year at Harvard, my declaration of Freedonian citizenship seemed like a good idea at the time, and now like mortifyingly pretentious posturing in retrospect. But unlike much of what I did during my freshman year, my declaration of Freedonian citizenship sprang from an insecurity that still haunts me: a lack of cultural identity...
...representatives for organizations like the Hellenic Society gave out candy and encouraged students to sign up for e-mail lists. Though I looked, I did not find a table representing students of combined white-trash and Jewish descent. This was about the time I started telling people I was Freedonian...
...acquaintances here will devolve into a discussion of the participants’ heritage, usually by way of a discussion of the etymology of their surnames. Lately, though, I’ve begun to wonder whether my classmates’ cultural identities aren’t as newfound as my Freedonian one—albeit more authentic. Our cultural identity isn’t important in our hometowns, where we know each others’ families, and where we tend to take certain parts of our lives—what we eat for dinner, say, or how we celebrate holidays?...
...frustration with my lack of cultural identity springs, I think, from my inability to form this sort of connection. Though I’ve not stooped to reclaim my Freedonian citizenship, I have, at times, been sorely tempted. This weekend, after many telephone calls conducted at a high volume in what sounded to me like particularly vituperative Greek, my roommate departed for a Greek club in Boston with a swarm of people with whom she shares little more than a common heritage. And as I watched her go, part of me wished that I could have a posse of Freedonians...
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