Of a Beautiful Memory...

Sioux Falls is the town in which we are speaking this week. Tonight we went bowling with our host family. I'm rather inconsistent when it comes to bowling. I never know what to tell people when they ask if I'm good at it. It truly depends on the day. Today I was horrible. On the way home from the alley tonight I noticed the "Sioux Falls" sign on the freeway and it made my mind soar back to my childhood in the best way. "Sioux" is a word that is very special to me and I shall tell you why.

When I was a kid, for some reason I was into American Indians in a big way. I wanted to be one. I devoured every book ever written on the subject and I could tell you every detail about every tribe. "Sioux" is significant in my life because for the longest time I pronounced it "Swix." Until the day my mom made me read one of my Indian books out loud and corrected my pronunciation, that tribe to me was "Swix." Jared suggested that I share that story when introducing myself in our presentation, but then decided that it might sound racist. I don't know, if someone got up and spoke in front of a group with me in the audience and confessed that when they were a child they had a burning desire to be a little Finnish kid who braided their hair in circles and ate lutefisk, I'd take it as a compliment. But that's just me.

Let me tell you more about this Indian obsession. I had legit buckskin pants with tassels. Ok actually they were probably polyester, but in my head they were buckskin. And I would either wear moccasins or be barefoot. So actually, I didn't own moccasins, thus I was mostly barefoot. In my mind it was also not appropriate for Indians to wear shirts. So I didn't. On a good day, my mom would also let me wear war paint. She would braid my hair into two braids and I had three different feathers to choose from to stick in the back of my braids.

I was really depressed for the longest time that I had blonde hair and blue eyes, unlike my best friend, Lauren, who was everything an Indian should look like. It made my little heart heavy that I couldn't accurately portray the appearance of an American Indian. However, as long as I wasn't looking at myself in all my paleness, I WAS an American Indian, and I was fierce. I killed deer and cooked the meat over the fires that I started by rubbing two sticks together really hard. I had a legit teepee with a hole in the top so the smoke from my fire could get out. I lived on a prairie with rolling hills, or in a deep forest with lots of trees. My favorite tribe of all time was, and probably still is, Hopi. I just liked their houses. And if I remember correctly they were pretty friendly.

That one word seriously sent me so deeply into Indian land that I stayed there for about two hours, living happily in the vivid memory of a very real alternate reality. Those times were so fun. I really wish I was eight again so I could get dressed up in my pants and war paint and disappear into my other world. I remember the day my mom told me I had to start wearing shirts. I cried. But then she made me a "buckskin" dress which I found to be rather girly and not at all fierce. But I did love that she beaded the tassels. It just changed my game a little. I became an Indian princess who was wild and brave and went hunting with the boys.

I don't really have a point to this post. I just thought that perhaps you all would find my world as fascinating as I did.