New Year, Same Stereotypes

It’s 2013, and to celebrate it my high school band woke up at three in the morning to march five and a half miles in the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, California. It was a great honor to represent West Virginia in the parade, and spending a week in Los Angeles was amazing! Before we left for the trip, we were warned about some of the comments we might receive from the westerners. I mentally prepared for this, but mostly everyone was really nice. Mostly. We did run into a few people that made the stereotypes I’d learned about in class realistic.

We were eating lunch outside with some of the other bands before Bandfest, a band spectacular featuring the bands in the Rose Parade. It was all great until we went to throw our boxes and cans away. Some of the women supervising us watched as we threw our food away, and asked if we would please take our cans over to the recycling area. We said okay, even though mine still had soda in it. A few minutes later, some more of our students went to throw their garbage away and the lady rudely said “Um, in California, we recycle.” This of course got some of us amused enough to ask about the origins of recycling. “What’s recycle?” “Is it when you ride a bicycle for the second time?” What was even more amusing was that the woman actually took the time to explain to some of us what recycling was. We laughed about the incident throughout the evening. Perhaps we overreacted, but it was astounding that she actually possessed the level of ignorance to think recycling was a foreign concept to us. If anyone reading this has never been to West Virginia, yes, we recycle. Yes, we actually care about the environment. Needless to say, though, my can ended up in the trash anyway.

On New Year’s Eve, we went to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It was beautiful, and out of respect our director had us dress nicely. A really neat thing we got to do there was eat lunch in an area near the former Air Force One and Marine One. A few of my friends were on an elevator traveling to said area when a woman asked where they were from. When they replied “West Virginia”, the woman (who apparently does not have a proper mental filter) commented “Oh, so that’s why you’re dressed up; so you don’t look like hillbillies.” My friends were speechless the rest of the ride.

I do not know whether I am more offended by the comment, or more impressed that she, along with many others we encountered, knew that West Virginia was a state; unlike a waiter we had on New Year’s who could not comprehend that Virginia and West Virginia were two different states. Of course, there are probably other reasons to this than simple geography. My group and I were waiting in line to see an Aladdin show in Disneyland. Some men beside us noticed that our shirts said the name of the city and state and asked, “Morgantown. So, are you guys near where they’re filming Buckwild?” My automatic response was “No. That’s in the middle of nowhere.” I wanted him to get that it was not what West Virginia was like, but he probably laughed when he saw the episodes that were unfortunately staged in my city.

I knew some people only know the stereotypes from this area, but this trip gave me a good glimpse of how prominent they are still today. It made my passion to conquer them even greater.

                                                                                                                         -R