Anyone who is not from New Jersey just thought, “Makes sense, lots of superheroes get their powers from toxic waste!” I can appreciate the humor about my home state, which I learned in my late teens is sometimes referred to as the “Armpit of America.” If you’re not from New Jersey, poking fun at us is easy, and I’ll get to the other forty-nine states in just a moment. For now, I’m going to point out some of the better aspects of being from the “Garden State.”
1. New Jersey is small.
Not Delaware small, but small enough that being from NJ means something. Sure, the North Jersey/South Jersey thing exists (does Central Jersey exist?), but overall, being from New Jersey is an identity. Put two people from New Jersey in a room anywhere in the country and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll start trying to figure out where the other one is from, what high school they went to, and whether they know the same people.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
2. New York City is right next door.
Living in the almost literal shadow of probably the most important city in the world puts a bit of a chip on one’s shoulder. People from New York State can associate themselves with the City easily. Much to my chagrin, we even have multiple professional sports teams that take the City name but play in NJ. The owners either want the cachet or are embarrassed by their location. Either way, it breeds a little-brother mentality that can serve our residents well.
We’re constantly reminded that we’re almost New York, but not quite.
Eventually, you learn to be comfortable being underestimated.
3. The Turnpike, Newark Airport, the Parkway and Jersey Shore are usually the first things that pop into people’s minds about NJ.
While they are all eyesores in their own right, they do a pretty good job of embodying the Jersey persona: “You don’t know me until you know me.”
People discount an entire state based on the worst of what we have to offer, and that’s generally okay with us. Most of the people that I know from NJ are extremely tight with “their people” and a bit suspicious of outsiders. It’s not that we’re unfriendly. It’s more that you need to put in the time to get to know us.
We have it all, but we’re pretty easy to dismiss if you can’t be bothered to look.
And honestly, there’s something useful about that.
4. Pork Roll or Taylor Ham?
Not only do we have a meat that is pretty unique to our area, we also fight amongst ourselves about what it’s called. In all honesty, it’s a tissue-vs.-Kleenex thing, but I’ll move on.
Being unique comes in all kinds of packages, even a little bag of meat. But that uniqueness probably comes with a bit of heritage. A tip of the cap to the people that came before us, because even though we’re not always nice, respect seems to be a big deal.
If you’ll notice, none of these is particularly positive on its own. They’re generalizations that are presented with a positive slant.
Is being from New Jersey truly a superpower?
Not really.
But that’s actually the point.
Each person needs to decide how to look at the ingredients of who they are and choose to see those component pieces as positive or negative. Being overlooked can destroy someone, unless it doesn’t. Unless they use it to make themselves stronger.
That’s true no matter where you’re from.
Maybe you’re too loud. Maybe you’re too quiet. Maybe you’re stubborn, impatient, intense, awkward or just a little different. Maybe you’ve been told that one of those things is a weakness.
So what?
Who you are is an advantage if you figure out how to make it one.
There’s nothing particularly special about being from anywhere. Nothing in the water is going to make you awesome. It might give you cancer, but that’s a different blogpost.
You have to tell yourself a story about your greatness.
Then you have to go out and tell the rest of the world.
Being from New Jersey is not enough.
But it’s not a bad start.
And if you’re wondering whether being a little rude is part of that superpower, I prefer to think of it this way:
I’m not rude.
I’m from New Jersey. There’s a difference.
What exit? Exit 19 off of Route 80!
Pete
At a certain point too much of something becomes its opposite. The drug that could save your life becomes poison. Too much time and attention from a significant other, no longer feels warm and fuzzy, it feels weird and creepy. The key to keeping this from happening is to keep from overdosing on something. At the moment, if I’m being honest, I’m LIKED out.
Our next stop was Paris. There was of course the visit to the US Embassy in Paris to get a new passport which took longer than we would have liked. After getting it we had to rush to pick up our tickets to the five games that we were going to attend. Our first match was Germany vs USA. Despite both being American we were following Germany through the group stage. The most memorable thing from following Germany for me was the warm-up. Watching Jurgen Klinsmann get crossed balls for him to side volley from head height was amazing. He was obviously a world class player honing his craft and I loved seeing it up close. In addition to that match, we saw the Louvre in less than 2 hours. Art lovers we are not! Next was Germany vs Yugoslavia which was in Lens, a much smaller venue and not much around.
In my junior year of college, I traveled to Ecuador as part of a winter semester program. I lived with a local family and took a class on literature. It was a life altering experience on a variety of levels. Although I went there to improve my Spanish abilities, I can link many of my fundamental beliefs back to that trip. I changed as a person during my time there. One of the simple ways that I changed was that I became the “King of Introductions”. There was no official coronation! It’s an unofficial title that I developed for myself but it was a key component to many later successes.
The Beatles may have been right by saying that love can’t be bought but the purchase of a new jersey of your son’s favorite team does help. Our first stop was in Liverpool for the Everton vs Manchester United match. We had a day to tour around the city a bit but most of our time was spent at the club shop and taking photos near the two stadiums of the city’s rival teams. Despite leaning toward Liverpool in the past, I had to stick with my son in his support of the Toffees. It was not an easy thing to do since the first English player that I ever knew by name was Kevin Keegan. Remember that I was raised in an era before the internet, so VHS instructional videos on soccer were my introduction to international soccer. However keeping with my overall thought process, supporting Everton makes much more sense for me. I tend to choose the road less traveled. Regardless, on match day it seems that I made the right choice. Everton pummeled the Red Devils from start to finish. It seemed as though ManU was expecting the Toffees to roll over and die. My son got the perfect introduction to live football in England, coincidentally 4-0 was the same score to the first POSH match that I ever attended.
With my young son in tow, I could not take part in everything that football culture has to offer. I did take the time to visit the home of PISA at Eb’s. We didn’t stay long and I only had one beer but I felt like I needed to show up and see what was going on. I really should have coordinated better with some of the people on londonroad.net. It would have been nice to put faces with screen names but this was a last minute decision because I did not know what to expect from the place. It was actually the perfect place to go prior to the match. The food looked and smelled good. The memorabilia around the place was a good retrospective on some of the reasons why I’m a POSH fan now.
The match itself was preceded by a “First Time Fan” experience. My son got the chance to sit in the team seats and high five the players on their way out to the warm-up. For me it was an opportunity to be a few feet away from two POSH legends: Aaron Mclean and Darren Ferguson. Although I must admit that I dropped the ball on getting photos with both. As a coach I just couldn’t bring myself to interfere with pregame preparations. Despite that fact, I still enjoyed the experience of getting down on the field level and seeing the players up close.
Prior to the match, the man who lead the “First Time Fan” activities had said to the group, “If we win, you need to come back because we won. If we tie or lose, you need to come back to see a win.” Although the game ended in a draw, it was still a great experience for Luke and I. I would have preferred three points and a dominant performance like I got during my last visit to London Road but this was special in its own way because I was there with Luke. We will will be back at some point and hopefully it won’t take a decade this time!
After playing the game with the POSH for a while, I decided to look into how the team was in real life. It was very casual at first but the season they got into a relegation battle really drew me in. After that I followed the team regularly online by reading the match reports and checking Skysports.com. The POSH forum at LondonRoad.net was another way that I got information relevant to the club. The slow burn of my love for POSH got a large log thrown upon it in September of 2006 when Darragh MacAnthony became chairman of the club. He stated that his ambition was to do exactly what I had done in the video game world. If I wasn’t hooked before, I was all in at that point. My newborn son had a full kit and I wore POSH blue (or bright yellow) regularly. In addition to game days, I wore the POSH colors whenever I ran long distance races.
In 2007 I decided that it was time to visit London Road to attend a match. It was possibly the most frugally planned trip that I could arrange. I was in England for three nights including one in a basement room of a one star hotel in London. It was an amazing trip! The main reasons that the trip was amazing were all POSH related. The team beat MK Dons 4-0 despite Shane Blackett getting sent off in the second half. After the match, I waited around for autographs from the players and coaches. Shwan Jalal and Craig Mackail-Smith were particularly nice to me. Unfortunately I did not get to meet the new manager, Darren Ferguson. At that moment, I mainly knew him as Sir Alex’s son. Eventually he would become one of the best POSH managers by putting Darragh’s plan for promotion into effect. By signing ambitious young players and putting them into a system that created boatloads of goals, he has become my favorite manager.
In 1998 my best friend and I traveled to Europe for the World Cup which was held in France. Despite our main goal being to watch soccer games, we also made side trips to other cities inside and outside of France. One of our stops was the Spanish city of Barcelona. It’s a beautiful city on the coast with the architecture of Gaudi, the shopping of Las Ramblas and hosted the Olympics only a few years prior. Despite all of those magnificent characteristics, whenever I talk about that trip, I usually talk about the Police Department. Let me explain!
Man has created several “boxes” to travel in. They have been created to make certain types of travel quicker and safer. The most literal box is the elevator. It makes travel between floors of a building faster. In the beginning there was danger of cables breaking or other malfunctions but elevators have become ever faster and safer over the years. We have several other boxes, which gain in speed and safety as we pass through time: the car, the train, the airplane and the list goes on. Traveling in boxes has become a way of life for most people. We depend upon them heavily.
Huryk Unlimited 