50% + 50% DOES NOT make 100%

Warning: a great amount of nonsense babbling with no revolutionary insightful conclusion what-so-ever coming up.




Anyone who’s read my blog knows the story already: born and bred in Mexico, grew up in an American cultured-household, brought up as a bi-cultural kid… yaddi-yaddi-yadda…..




I think I remember the first time I consciously realized I was not 100% Mexican. It had to be around the time this picture was taken, meaning I was in third or fourth grade of elementary school and around the age of 8.

I guess it’s true what they say, a picture does speak a thousand words, huh?

But realizing it, didn’t necessarily mean understanding what this meant. It was like, in a way, I was aware that I was different somehow, and then I stored that thought in the back of my mind along with the knowledge that I loved chile piquin and that Mazinger Z was the coolest cartoon in the world.



I don’t think I thought much about it again until high school. Other than an incident in which I most vehemently refused to participate in the annual 20 de Noviembre school parade dressed up as an Adelita for reasons I don’t quite remember well but that surely involved a self-consciousness to being so obviously not 100% mexican, I didn’t really give much thought to the subject during Jr High.



But once I entered High School something happened to make this change. First of all, my friendships were more mature and intimate. In most cases I would meet my friends’ families and they would meet mine. I would stay for lunch or dinner at their home and realize that Sunday Pizzas and Cocido Español were not fixtures in their weekly menu. Most of them had never heard of Mafalda, Bob Dylan or (gasp!) Silvio and I was never up to date in the misadventures of the heroine of the 8 o’clock telenovela. None of my friends had siblings named after a slain band member of The Beatles nor a Hollywood star from the 30’s. Visiting the abuelitos for them did not involve annual 1500+km road-trips and passport stamping.

The other thing I realized was that I could either play down my non-100%-ness or play it up and somehow this regulated my status of “cool” among people. It was as if the more I tried to reach 100% levels the less I felt I belonged and, quite the contrary, the more people seemed to push me away, geared I guess by their uneasiness at me being so obviously not 100%…. But the more I exaggerated my “foreignness” (like by pompously correcting my English teacher in front of the entire class or continuously boasting about my quite evident unconventional upbringing) the more my stock rose. Funny, don’t you think, how most people claim that the “outsiders” have it the worst in high-school, while for me, it seems it was exactly the opposite?

I have to say though, after a little phase of trial-error experimentation, I finally reached the point where I knew how to balance that non-100%-ness to my advantage and that made those high school and early college years some of the best in my life.



So I was aware of it and I knew how to work it, but I still didn’t understand what “it” meant.



And then I moved to a different city. In a new country. On another continent. And met all kinds of people. I met 100%ers and 50%-25%-25%ers and 25%-25%-25%-25%ers ………….. and many more 50%-50%ers like me!!!!!!


It was like being a non-100%er was being 100%!!!!


I soon discovered a lot of people in my generation in Europe come from bi-cultural, tri-cultural and even multi-cultural backgrounds (chalk it up to geographical, political, historical, (...) reasons). So suddenly I was meeting half French-half Tunisians, half Colombian-half Spaniards, half Brits-half Danish… half’n’halfs like me! My own Hubby was a certified HnH!

And so it began. My long, sturdy observation and analysis of what being a HnH meant. I must confess I didn’t get very far though. After a while, I realized something that is so obviously basic I must have been a moron not to have figured it out earlier: Yes, Background does play an influential part in making you who you are, but that’s not it. Life Experiences do most of the job.

And very soon I realized that my Life Experiences were not similar to those of the people I met nor theirs to mine. We each had our own Life Experiences that shaped us more than just the fact of being non-100%ers. I still felt fascinated by the HnH scene, but somewhere along the line I came to the conclusion that the answers I was looking for weren’t going to come from there.



And then I had another somewhat shocking breakthrough a few years ago.



It all became so very clear to me one afternoon that, again, I felt so stupid for not having realized it before.

I had been trying so hard to figure out what being a 50%-50% meant that I had not thought of what it didn’t mean. It didn’t mean I was 100%.

Because 50% + 50% DOES NOT add up to 100%

I was never a 100%er in Mexico (we’ve established that much already) and I was never going to be one in the US either. But living abroad made me realize a new factor I hadn’t yet considered into this equation:

As time progresses, 50% + 50% + Life Experiences abroad = a decreasing 100% anything

The longer I lived abroad, the more both my 50%s felt weak, pale, transparent, foreign and sometimes even false. At times I would go home and feel like a real foreigner.



So I did what any dumb kid does when she realizes she’s hit a brick wall: I called my dad.

And he did what any unconventional dad does when his screwed up daughter comes asking for counsel: he gave me puzzling advice.

When he heard my cry for help, his reply was simple: “Why does it matter so much? In the end, we’re all citizens of the world. *shrug* Some figure it out, some just don’t.”






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Fned.