reentry shock: alienation

Springback to Fast-food Chicken Consumption 

Stage three of reverse culture shock began in late April with chicken. Specifically, the greasy fried kind ordered at fast-food restaurants all over the United States. I had a sudden and disturbing realization that one could find these chicken chains on every corner across an endless sprawl of banal American shopping strip landscape. Cars lined up and snaked around the chicken building, idling in the drive-thru, sometimes overflowing into the street and blocking traffic as each new customer followed their chicken wing whim. More US cars lined up for drive-thrus than I’d ever remembered seeing. I counted an astounding 52 cars once in line for Chick-fil-A. And one line wasn’t enough anymore for America’s growing appetite; some of the more popular places had two lines. Overly exuberant teenage workers stood outside, stationed along the way wearing reflective neon safety vests, cheerily, yet eerily, ready to take your order and god bless you goodbye. 

Everyone everywhere in America seemed to be waiting behind the driver’s wheel to get their fingers, nuggets, and strips. Google “Chicken in Dallas,” and the Yellow Pages lists the top 30 restaurant chains. Top 30? How many more are there after that? How many chicken fast food restaurants does one city need? Chicken-loving customers in Dallas can choose from a long list with names like Popeye’s, Williams, Slims, and Bo’s. This country’s surplus in the consumption of chicken meals made me question my strange place of origin. Who are these people? Why must they eat so much chicken? Is it only a matter of convenience? And how convenient is it when there are 20 cars ahead in line? 

Stage three begins the roughest point of reentry shock. Experts in this sort of thing characterize it with the feeling that you don’t belong. A sense that you are a stranger in your own country. Things change at home. Home seems different somehow. You changed while you were away. It’s difficult to understand how exactly, much less to communicate this to others. They are not so interested anyway. Why should they be? Life abroad is only interesting for the person who was there. 

There are layers to this third-stage alienation step of adapting back to one’s home culture. These vague, out-of-place feelings begin to surface while peeling away the papery parts of the re-entry onion. Peel enough back, and you will ask where you fit in this new world called home. Eventually, another figure of speech is needed from the produce section altogether. The Brazilian expression descascar o abacaxi fits perfectly. It translates to peeling the pineapple and means tackling a prickly problem. Acclimating back to American culture at the pandemic’s peak would be just that. 

Surviving Summer in the Big Texas City 

By summer, I felt like a stranger in my own country, fighting to navigate the basics of survival. It was a summer hustle like I’d never experienced. I needed a job, a roof over my head, and a reliable car to commute between both. I needed to find all the above in a city that had grown by more than a million people in the five years since I’d left. After residing on a Caribbean island for years, I was far behind the mark on managing life in a major US metropolitan area. And scrambling to reconstruct it all while the whole country was locked up inside, hiding away from a mysterious airborne virus, seemed insurmountable.

By the end of June, and after a few months in lockdown working the night shift teaching students virtually in Italy, I still hadn’t pulled together any semblance of a functional American life. Withdrawing cash weekly from my Italian bank account, I routinely used an ATM in the front lobby at the Comfort Inn, where I had stayed for two weeks to quarantine. I knew the machine would deliver cash to hand, and I guess I had fears that any other ATM might swallow up my card and leave me without an income to survive, albeit an income suited for another country where the cost of living was a fraction of life in Dallas.

My phone only worked where I could find wifi to use WhatsApp since there was still a foreign SIM card inside. I held out for months before finally letting go of that Italian phone number and signing up for a new service in the States. Mainly because US phone service is significantly more expensive, and not having a US number seemed to be the last barrier between a world abroad and reentering a system where I became a constant target in American marketing. I wasn’t used to being cornered and cajoled with invasive questions for every purchase, whether a pack of gum or a dining table with chairs. Inevitably, the cashier would always ask:

“Do you have a phone number with us?”

“No.” 

“Would you like to sign up with your phone number as a rewards member?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“Are you sure about that? You can save 20% on your purchase today.” 

“No thanks!” 

“That would be $16.50 off your total.” 

“Actually, I don’t have an American phone number.” 

“We would only need an email to apply for a store credit card, which offers cashback promotions.”

“No, thanks. I’d just like to buy my toaster oven and go.”

“Would you like to at least sign up for notifications using your email? You can stay informed about our weekly deals.” 

“I don’t even live in the United States.” 

That would usually end things abruptly, but technically, I couldn’t use those words anymore to end these exchanges.

The world was unpredictable, so I held on to a car I had left behind with my family—a dilapidated Honda I named Green Monster. My dad loaned the Green Monster out to anyone who had fallen on hard times while I was away. There was some cosmetic wear and tear: Dented bumpers imprinted with poles hit by single moms zipping out from underground parking garages. Ripped upholstery etched from the claws of rambunctious foster pets. Window tinting peeled away by the tiny fingertips of curious youngsters. Missing door handles ripped off by harried, desperate neighbors in need. 

My father used gray duct tape and green spray paint to meticulously repair everything. He cared for the Green Monster as if it were a rare emerald found in the jungles of Colombia. He’d routinely cover it with the makeshift padding of old bed comforters whenever a Texas thunderstorm threatened. The neighbor’s BMW would be pelted to destruction by baseball-sized hail, but the Green Monster survived every storm unscathed. “This car runs like a top,” my dad proudly gleamed as he patted the creature’s head on its sunroof, sealed off from leaks with impenetrable adhesive. “And it’s so easy to park,” he added. Never has a wreck of a car been so doted on as the Green Monster.

In my mind, the Green Monster was an abominable piece of machinery. It seemed that way because some electrical problems made it act out at inconvenient times. The alarm would go off intermittently; the taillights would go on and off unexpectedly. The taillights went out once while driving down the tollway one morning on the first day of a new job. The cop who pulled me over—hours before the sun began to beam its rays on this American side of the planet—let me go without a ticket, out of pity, I presume. I rebuilt my new American life behind the wheels of that car amidst all of its electrical tantrums. 

An old Honda would cost a fortune in a country like Aruba, but I felt like a true outsider driving that heap in Dallas. Nothing else like it communicates how much catching up you have to do after living in remote parts of the world. One cannot overstate the influence cars have on American culture and the impact driving a nice car has on an American’s status within said culture. In Aruba, everyone bought Hyundais. And in Italy, everybody took the bus. 

There were other aspects of re-entry shock to be experienced via American car culture. I winced at the metal debris from crashes littering the side of the roads. I had become accustomed to wooden signs warning islanders to slow down at major roundabouts, posting a deterrent to speeding with the number of fatal automotive accidents every year: usually between 1 and 3. It took me months to catch up above 45 mph in the big city. One day, when I was beginning to find my comfort zone on the freeway again–barreling down it at around 70 miles per hour—a car burst into flames in front of me. I swerved across three lanes of speeding traffic to avoid the oncoming fire while watching the car screech to a stop in my rearview mirror as an inferno on wheels ejected four teenage boys out each door. Clearly running from the law that would soon arrive, they bolted towards the embankment and rolled down it out of sight. This is why those true-life crime shows are always filmed in Dallas. With scenes like this on the daily, the city provides endless material.

Falling Behind in Public Education

By the autumn of phase three, I still felt I was in a world where I did not belong. Fleeing Italy just five months ago, I landed a job and leased a downtown apartment at the pandemic’s peak. Still, life at home was dramatically different from the United States of America I had left in 2015. It felt like I had returned to another planet in a faraway, bleak galaxy. It didn’t help that COVID-19 had utterly transformed the day-to-day of American society. 

I took the first job offered to survive the times, working with Dallas Independent School District, teaching English language learners in Oak Cliff about Texas history. My international experience landed me the job, but I wasn’t prepared for the apocalypse in American education ahead. Arriving for my first work day, I dodged construction left and right. The ongoing construction, paired with the Covid protocol of masking up and keeping six feet from other human beings, accentuated the dystopian vibe. The classroom assigned to me was a spacious one with windows, which was about the only thing it had going. 

Opening the door for the first glimpse of my new home, the room sat empty except for a towering relic in the middle of the room—a beige filing cabinet left behind from 1974. Its door handles were missing, and decades of goopy sticker shavings covered the surface. Next to that cabinet sat a beige plastic chair, and on top of that chair was a mammoth roll of barrier tape that read: Danger Asbestos Hazard. Beside the chair was a filthy trash can; picture the kind with years caked in layers of unidentifiable residuum. Discarded and abandoned inside the trash can, a scraggly teddy bear looked up at me with desperate eyes. I thought to myself, Ahh, buddy, I know how you feel. I felt the same way, thrown into the trash of public education in American society. Pulling the poor creature out of the bin, I quickly gave him a proper home atop the plastic chair where he could sit upright with dignity. I threw the asbestos tape in the trashcan and placed it outside my classroom door. Then I wabbled the filing cabinet out into the hallway as well. I had a plastic chair and an old teddy bear to start the school year. I’d have to buy everything else with my own money—including a mop and an industrial-sized space heater. 

Looking for a reprieve from the harsh environment inside my classroom those first few days at work, I sought out a cold drink in the teacher’s lounge. This room was also empty except for yet another beige plastic chair. On top of this chair teetered an 80s-era microwave. This was the only chair in the teacher’s lounge, so there was obviously no lounging to be done. I did find a soda machine, but it was unplugged and apparently out of order. The refrigerator, however, was plugged into the socket and seemed to be working. As I opened the door, a dim light flickered while an old motor buzzed, but the inside was empty and covered with speckled grime. It smelled faintly of gym socks. Obviously, this place did not receive frequent visitors. Once school finally started, it became a quarantine room for students who showed symptoms of COVID-19. 

I developed a strict morning routine during this stage three station of life. Arriving at seven each morning, I tidied up the mess left behind by the construction crew working the night before, usually remnants of burrito wrappers scattered across my desk. I’d scrub the classroom down with Clorox wipes. The room was never cleaned; it was only sprayed with some mysterious mist that supposedly killed the virus but also curled up the edges of all my paperwork. Then I’d scramble to put together a lesson plan to be delivered both online, talking into my laptop to a grid of postage-stamp-sized people and face-to-face with students already waiting in line six feet apart on the sidewalk outside my window. Freezing cold or sudden downpours, they’d be standing in line until 7:30 AM when the doors finally opened. They would then proceed inside single file fashion, methodically dipping their foreheads down towards the muzzle of a temperature gun. Next, they would hold out their hands to receive a spurt of hand sanitizer. Finally, they’d pick up a brown paper bag and stand in line again, silently and six feet apart, along the wall in the hallway for another 20 minutes with a plexiglass divider in one hand and brown bag breakfast in the other. I remember thinking it was like watching a factory assembly line of children.

I taught back-to-back classes from 7:45 – 3:00 with 45 minutes of quiet time between the morning and afternoon to eat lunch and complete work that did not involve supervision and direct instruction. Inevitably, some of that “quiet” time would be used to monitor behavior outside my classroom. Even with a limited number of kids on campus, altercations would routinely break out after lunch in the hallway bathroom across from my classroom door. Students would flock to the fight to TikTok a video of it. Getting footage of a teacher freaking out while trying to break up the scuffle would generate the most views. Even on the days when kids weren’t trying to physically hurt one another, I usually spent my last class of the day diffusing verbal hostility shot back and forth. My job was to keep class under control so that nothing escalated into physical violence while teaching students to “Remember the Alamo.” 

Let me pause to offer praise for the teachers I worked with during that time. They were some of the best I’ve ever known. You have to be to survive inner-city public schools, especially during Covid. And students are the same everywhere. Most were eager to learn and be successful, but the US public school system is failing them. Standardized testing is the most significant piece of the problem. We had students at home for over a year because of Covid. When they finally returned to school, the first thing they did was sit down behind plexiglass and take the STAAR test. I tallied ten total weeks of standardized testing. The testing companies are making bank, money that would be better spent putting professionals in the classrooms serving students by building relationships and providing the emotional and academic support they so desperately need.

By December, I’d somehow escaped getting Covid, but my central nervous system had received quite a jolt. Counting down the hours until Christmas Break, DISD heavy weights shimmied into my classroom, pushing a rolling cart and singing carols. Decked out in sequin Santa hats and reindeer antlers, their demeanor beamed as they delivered our Christmas gift. “Happy Holidays!” I was handed a miniature can of room-temperature Coca-Cola and a caramelized popcorn ball. 

In the teacher’s world, a popcorn ball comes with a corny tagline. No one is butter than you! There is an incredibly bizarre practice in public schools of gifting teachers with items that could be bought at 7-Eleven or dispensed from a vending machine, each with a punned message. A bag of taco seasoning reads Taco about an amazing teacher. A water bottle has a message wrapped around thanks for making our students thirst for knowledge. A pink eraser says the influence of a teacher can never be erased. Anyone could scrap these gifts together in under a minute from junk inside their desk drawer. And the pandemic brought about endless new possibilities. A face mask states we simply cannot mask our gratitude. Hands down you are the best around is taped onto a bottle of hand sanitizer. I received both of those gifts when Covid was killing thousands of Americans every day. I received gifts like this even after a teacher died from Covid at our school. If someone survives the day by dodging a virus, or even a bullet nowadays, these gifts somehow seem distasteful and insanely inappropriate. 

Texas Missions and Winter Blast

After a long semester of staying alive and developing new skills in teaching, we took off for San Antonio to see the Spanish missions over the New Year holiday. Amid all the aforementioned madness, I was genuinely happy and super enthusiastic to teach Texas history, fascinated by the epic history of my homeland under all six flags, especially the first two. 

The beginning of Texas history under the flag of Spain is haphazardly connected to the conquest of Mexico. Some of the first Spaniards to set foot in Texas were shipwrecked survivors. They would have never washed up on the Texas shore if their captain had not lost his eyeball to Hernan Cortes. Their leader was Panfilo de Narvaez, and he’s famous for two failed expeditions. During the first, he was sent with orders by the governor of Cuba to intercept Cortes’s conquest of Mexico, although somehow Cortes convinced all of Narvaez’s men to join his army instead of capturing him. Spain took pity on Narvaez when he returned home and offered to finance another expedition to the Gulf Coast—from Flordia to Mexico—as consolation for his lost eyeball. On the second, he landed around modern-day Tampa Bay, Florida, and detoured inland to scout out the territory. He returned farther north shore to find his ships missing. Stranded in a hostile land, Narvaez and his ninety men cobbled makeshift rafts from tree trunks, using their clothing as sails. They survived two weeks of storms in the Gulf of Mexico before washing up near Galveston Island. In the end, Narvaez perished at sea, and only four Spaniards survived to tell the tale, eventually escaping captivity amongst the natives and walking to Mexico City. Cabeza de Vaca, one of the four survivors, wrote a book accounting the whole ordeal. 

The French moved haphazardly on Texas a hundred years after the Spanish and also suffered a disastrous fate. Initially headed for the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle also lost his way at sea and washed up on the Texas shore. Very few of the three hundred men who set sail with him survived. Most died from Indian attacks, disease, poisonous fruit, snakes, and even an alligator who swallowed up at least one Frenchman as he crossed the Brazos River. Others were crippled: trampled by buffalo herds or sliced up by wild boars. Some just disappeared into the woods. Years later, a few from France’s short stint in Texas were found naked and tattooed, living amongst the indigenous folks. These individuals were barely recognizable to the Spanish, who were there to build missions, mainly to thwart the French moving in from the east. 

Texas was the rough and deadly frontier land of New Spain during that time. Spain’s mission system was an attempt to tame it. The most impressive missions were built along the San Antonio River, beginning in 1718 with Mission San Antonio de Valero, the Alamo. Four more were built after that. It’s hard to believe you are in the United States when you go on tour along the 10-mile stretch connecting them all.

Traveling to these missions helped me maintain an identity that was quickly fading away. Taking Texas excursions like this from time to time helped salvage something of the person I had become abroad. I loved reading about the history of places and then routinely immersing myself in another country and culture. Now, I found myself isolated between two vast oceans in the middle of a massive expanse of homogenized states. But there were still pockets of history and culture to explore. At least Texas shares a border and history with a foreign world below. And Dallas is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. I can sample Bandeja Paisa at authentic Colombian restaurants or find Mulino Bianco cookies at Jimmy’s Foodstore on Fitzhugh. I was learning to mix parts and pieces from my life abroad into my new life back home. And I was seeing Texas through an outsider’s lens for the first time. 

Upon returning to work in January, COVID-19 was rampant on campus. Kids were coming down with it almost every day. Anyone sitting next to a diagnosed case in class would be sent home for a week. The teachers, however, were not allowed to leave because there were no subs to take our place. Somehow, I managed to stay healthy. I was relieved when the Winter Storm of 2021 hit because I did not have to worry about getting the virus for a few days. I had time to reflect on all that had happened—albeit my reflection took place in the freezing cold without running water. Millions were without electricity and running water for days, and the whole state was frozen. 

We walked outside each day through the streets of downtown, a vast, empty winter wonderland of white snow reflected in glass skyscrapers all around. It was a downtown experience I had never had in Dallas. Something about the icy, stark scenery cleared my head and gave me space to think about everything I had been up to that moment. I thought about all I had accomplished. On what life abroad taught me. On what I had gained and lost. On what really matters in life. On my shifting priorities. On the things I did and didn’t want going forward. And then, I set out to reshape my new American life with determination as if my life depended on it. All of a sudden, in that moment, I knew exactly what I needed to do. 

I remember walking in from the freezing cold, and as we took off our hats and gloves, I told my soon-to-be husband, “I have to find another job. I should be making more money than what DISD is paying. I just want to be treated like a professional again.” In the following months, I found a new job, the perfect fit and down the street from the home we would eventually buy. I also took a road trip to raft the Colorado River and hike the Rockies. By Christmas, I was feeling more and more like an American every day. I became less annoyed with cashiers asking for personal information. And sometimes, I even found myself waiting in a fast food line for chicken nuggets.