The Tipping Point
By: Michael Akopian
IG: @michaelmikemikey_
If you have attended a public school, you know that it efficiently “Americanizes” you. It’s not intentional, but spending 7 hours a day with a cross section of kids your own impressionable age leaves you with no other option. At some point along the way the scales tip and before you can recognize it, you are an American.
My parents moved to the United States from the Soviet Union with my sister a few years before I was born. They went to great lengths to make sure that we spoke Russian at home - the common denominator for my Armenian parents, one of which was born and raised in Russia - and otherwise retained the traditions and values that they grew up with. I went into Kindergarten knowing very little English. But, by the third grade I was speaking my second language pretty well.
One of the concepts that wasn’t in our culture was an allowance. I learned one day that a classmate of mine received one weekly and it blew my mind. Getting a few dollars to spend however I want? That sounds like a dream come true. I came home and waited anxiously for hours for my dad to return from work and when he did, the conversation went something like this:
“Kyle told me that he gets an allowance. Can I get one too?”
“Why do you need it? Look, if you want something, Mom and I will get it for you.”
“Oh ... Can I get an Xbox?”
“No.”
Though I never asked him, I do wonder what my father thought when I approached him with that question. Was it a “What, why is he asking this?” thought like a child who just comes across a ridiculous concept? Or was it more of a “Aaaaaaaand there it is” thought, as if he and my mom knew that inevitably I would ask something like this as I navigated the American school system. I never did get that allowance, if you’re wondering - though my parents more than spoiled my sister and me.
Over the last 15 years, all four of us have evolved into more Americanized versions of the people we were back then, for better or for worse - and that’s completely expected given that we live here. But that makes it difficult to pinpoint when I “became” an American because I use my parents as a point of reference. They think X, I think Y; there’s a specific difference in our views that can sometimes be attributed to being born and raised in America and not. But them Americanizing in some ways doesn’t mean I do too, now that I’m not a child anymore; especially since what for them may be Americanized is for me normal as I grew up surrounded by it.
I never struggled with identity. If someone were to ask me right now, “Who are you?” I’d probably say I am American. But even being an American kid, many things that my more American friends did were just weird. One American friend (who is of Scottish/German/English descent) would often drink milk with his spaghetti dinner; a pairing I still find to be a bit strange. Being American requires a balance between your - or your family’s - cultural values and the values of the community you are in. While that means sacrificing or loosening some of those values, it does not mean purging them completely. While I still can not fully wrap my head around it, the milk and spaghetti combination is no longer as shocking as it once was.
Talking to my American girlfriend (who herself is of Irish/Scottish/Danish/German/Thai descent) about kids and how to raise them, I find myself wanting to expose them to those Armenian/Russian cultural values that do somewhat define me; especially given that they will, inherently, be more American than I am. But maybe giving my children an allowance isn’t the worst idea.
