No Such Thing As Normal :: Real Indians Eat Jello Native Americans Essays

No Such Thing As Normal What is "normal?" It can be defined as average or regular. Many people see normal as how the media portrays it in television shows. Generally, the "normal" family is made up of two parents, two point five children (preferably at least one girl and one boy) and a beloved pet. They also usually have a minivan or an SUV, a white picket fence and live in a nice, neatly organized home. My family has some of those traits, but not all. There is no such thing as a "normal family" because "normal families" are usually viewed as perfect and they rarely have problems. In the reading "Real Indians Eat Jell-O" by Laurie Carlson, the narrator is a Native American who lives in a trailer park. She reads books that explain what "normal" Indians are like and what they do. She notices that the people she reads about live in deserts, have out-of-the-ordinary pets, have "wise" grandparents and are have supernatural powers. Meanwhile, she lives in a mobile home, watches TV and has a gossipy grandmother who makes Jell-O salad. When she asks her grandmother why they don't act like the people she's read about, her grandmother tells her "Honey, be yourself (Carlson par. 7)." The grandmother doesn't want the narrator to feel she has to act in a certain way just because media demands it. This is similar to my family because we don't feel we have to be "perfect." We see the way media portrays the "normal" family but we don't change ourselves to be the same way. There are many reasons why my family is normal and not so normal in the media's eyes. We have a three-bed room, two-bath ranch home. We have a beautiful yard (without a fence) and three vehicles, one of which is a Ford Explorer. I have two heterosexual parents, two siblings (one sister and one brother) and a pet dog. That, however, is where the similarities end. My father had been divorced when he met my mother at their workplace. He is 20 years older than my mother, which is a rare occurrence in families today. He also had two adopted children, though they lived with their mother. After they got married my parents had our three-bedroom, one-bathroom (later two-bath) ranch home built. In 1982 they decided to adopt a baby and in 1984 they got me.