Inventor of the above-ground cement pond

I am deeply hurt.

Despite all the cultural sensitivity and political correctness in our society, my victimhood has been completely ignored.

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Unless you share my background, it may be difficult to understand my feelings, but please try to understand my pain.

I am jealous of every individual who was deprived of his or her rightful position as the ruler of some noble tribe or nation because my ancestors kidnapped the king in his or her lineage and forced him into a life of servitude.

I know I should feel sorry for these people, who should by all rights be kings and queens and chiefs and emperors and who instead are at this moment scrambling for quarters to feed the parking meter here on campus, but I am actually quite envious.

You see, their ancestors were important. They were respected by their peers. They were powerful. They were wealthy. And they never, ever owned t-shirts featuring references to bodily functions.

My ancestors were the result of a horrifying government experiment involving the cross-breeding of Jeff Foxworthy and Roseanne Arnold.

It’s not easy knowing I’m descended from white trash.

I can’t live a normal life, because I am plagued by a constant, nagging fear that some day, at the most inopportune moment, my genetic background will manifest itself.

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Sure, the tendency to decorate with naugahyde seems to have skipped a few generations, but it’s already shown up in some of my aunts and uncles and cousins-twice-removed, and I live with the fear that I will be the next to wake up one morning with roller-shaped tumors growing from my skull as I cope with an inexplicable craving for Spam.

Nature versus nurture? The question haunts me as I remember my father carefully explaining why Jose Carreras will never sing Let’s Get Drunk and Screw, then think of the day I spent at a family reunion, trying to pacify a relative who couldn’t understand Toni Morrison beat out her favorite romance novelist for the Nobel Prize in literature.

Every time I bask in the glow of a lava lamp, I wonder if my fascination with psychedelic wax globs is caused by my love of all things retro or if I will one day be seized by a compulsion to cover my walls with velvet Elvis paintings.

It is time for the government to recognize the plight of average American white trash. We deserve funding. We deserve studies. We deserve attention from leading scientists, whose research might be able to tell us why certain people consider polyester muu-muus irresistibly seductive. At the very least, we deserve a spot on Oprah. Some of them there experts she gets to explain stuff are downright ed-jee-cated. Maybe one of them can lay my fears to rest.

Until then, I’ll keep arranging weekly taste-tests to be sure I don’t lose my ability to distinguish between espresso and mountain-grown Folger’s crystals. Better to be safe than sorry. …

Emily Priddy is a senior in english.