Better than

I grew up knowing I came from good stock, the best of the best.  Anything one of my ancestors did was above and beyond what other folks did.  My great great great great grandma was not just a Native American.  She was an Indian Princess!

If we were part of it, involved in it, lived in it, thought it, it was exceptional! 

Of course the flip side of this was the scorn we felt when anyone did anything unusual (meaning something not always done for the last two hundred years.)  Violating the status quo brought out the killer instinct in many of the people around me.  Our unsung motto was, "As it was it forever shall be."

I was pretty much grown up before I discovered most people seemed to feel this.  Obviously everyone cannot be this way, so I slid them into the scorn column for a while.

Then I moved away, left the absolutes of small town America and found myself floundering in a world of diversity.

I tried to maintain the comfortable patterns, but the tantalizing alternatives before me slowly pulled me in.  Unlike the hedonistic bedlam I had been led to expect I discovered a world of open minded intelligent people who were much more inclined to accept me for who I was than anything else.  I no longer had to fall within the narrow confines of inflated ancestry or conformance.

I didn't have to be better than.  I just had to be me.