Average Jackie

I was born a middle-class, white girl.  Yep.  I actually was born into the middle class.  I know nobody else was.  Sure, I would love to pull the old, “I was poor and struggled” thing but, unlike most people, I actually understand where I came from.  Average, suburban America.  Which mostly meant melanin-tone-homogeneity (read “super-white”) and uneventfulness (read “super-boring”).  And, for me, it was great!  Being the goody-two-shoes that I was as a kid, boring, normal, and average was just fine by me.  My family had the regular level of dysfunction that allowed me to grow up just adjusted enough to play my expected roles in society.  My town was just safe enough that I never felt threatened by the outside world.  The community and institutions were just strong enough to have a decent amount of opportunity for the next generation to out-perform their parents financially. There was food on the table every day, I had new school clothes every year, and we watched TV every night after dinner until my dad sent us to bed.  The only thing that was slightly out of the ordinary about my household was that, rather than a dog, for a while, we had a pet parakeet.  Then my sister took in a stray cat, which killed the bird, and THEN we got a dog.  Yep.  We were freakishly average.

I am still a card-carrying member of the middle class.  And I am perfectly happy to be here, thank you very much.  I think that many middle-class folk are disappointed about being members of the middle class.  I believe that people’s expectations are often a lot higher for themselves because of unrealistic standards depicted in the media.  As a matter of fact, I think, because capitalistic societies are so celebratory of wealth, fame, beauty, power, and rock-star lifestyles, we tend to view the average person as lesser.  A lot lesser.  The media, in their ever-increasing competition for consumers, hunt down the most visually stimulating imagery, run the wildest stories, and use the most provocative language to get our attention.  All in the name of advertising revenue, mind you.  And consumers gobble it up and begin to believe that everyone should aspire to eat gold-flecked Cheerios for breakfast.  Perhaps it’s true that nobody cares if 150 million Americans got to work just fine, ate lunch at their favorite spot, and got home in time to watch a little of their kid’s soccer game, but I, for one, have grown weary of the stories about celebrities who die in spectacular, fiery crashes involving supercars and LSD.  So, yes, a big part of why I wrote this book is to begin the process of honoring the true heroes of society; the average person who actually keeps their hand on the wheel, stimulates the world economy by buying things in America that were made in China, Argentina, and Bangladesh, and manages to get their kids to eat broccoli once in a while.

Personally, I find the average person quite fascinating. Everyone has a story about how they got to be where they are today.  And whether that was via medical school or the school of hard knocks, I think the personal stories of the people we call the “average person” are far from boring.  Moreover, since we all share in the profound set of accidents that brought humanity into being and the ridiculously awkward ways that we perpetuate our species, I think that everybody can identify with these stories.  I don’t think I have a particularly unique take on the average person either.  There are lots of us who understand that those of us who are lucky enough to have pants, that we all put on one leg at a time, by the way, are pretty special in the world.  Everyone from George Clooney to the barista at the local coffee shop is basically the same person with the same problems.  The only difference is the atoms comprising the individual.  I’m on a personal mission to make the saying “Average is the new awesome!” go viral.  So, I decided to start off this campaign by giving you an insider’s view of the most awesomely average human being that I know.  Me.