
"Look everyone, it's Jayo! He's on a train track! He's so eccentric and cool!!?!"
A few years ago, I fell upon the realization that I was a little bit eccentric. It wasn't a terribly difficult realization to come to, as I was born into a world of obscurity. Subsequent changes in my life contributed to this obscurity, and by the time I reached college, there really was no turning back.
I was born three-quarters a Filipino, and a quarter Vietnamese, and spent my earliest life around extended family. This, alone, is not enough to bestow the five-year-old me with instant eccentricity. What did, however, was the fact that my name was Jayo Miko (that's two first names). My father would tell me years later that it was his undying love for rock and roll that formed my name, a personal homage to John (Lennon) and Mick (Jagger). I tried explaining this to my friends in elementary school, but they did not know who either of these people were, neither were they even capable of wrapping their minds around this word game. I've come to a point where, when people ask what my name comes from, I simply say "my parents were just creative", which suffices as a compromise.
When I was 5, my family moved to New Zealand. These days, when people hear this about my life, they're instantly puzzled, and expressively ask "New Zealand?", as if that were a stand alone remark. It was not a stand alone remark, and I give them a standard "Yeah, New Zealand" response in return. As much as there is to New Zealand as a country, I honestly have nothing to say about it. Don't get me wrong, I grew up there, and I absolute adore most things about it. When I explain these things to an outsider, however, they have a way of becoming uninteresting and dull. "Yeah, I actually went to High School surrounded by farmland", I say excitedly when someone asks about New Zealand agriculture, and they'll politely be amazed as they should be. But I know, deep inside, they're making automatic assumptions about education quality and farm animals, and will accidentally assume that I was taught on a farm.
Growing up Filipino in a New Zealand household also proved difficult. A little-known fact: Filipinos generally speak English with an American (ish) accent, regardless of which English speaking country they're in. I was thus posed with a typical Kiwi-Filipino Youth conundrum of the dual accent, and would switch between the two accents depending on the situation. When I was with my Filipino friends, or whenever I was home, I would speak in the Filipino American accent, whereas at school, I spoke in a New Zealand accent. This, of course, made mixing these worlds almost impossible. I'd bring friends home, and would manage to not speak whenever a family member was in the same room as my friend, just to maintain consistency. Needless to say, I was such a clever little child.
In High School, people caught up with this cleverness, and they would approach this accent-switching with startling defensiveness. I acknowledged the hostile response to the accent-switching, and began to internalizing that I was living a dramatic double life. One day, I just decided to arbitrarily pick one, and I began to use the American accent exclusively. There was a period in time when my friends and schoolmates would be annoyed at the change, and I'm pretty sure I actually lost friends over it. "You've changed", one said, as he turned around and walked into the sunset, while I sat on a soggy bench eating my fried rice with a plastic spoon. "Well, fuck you then", I responded to no one in particular. I took solace in the Hollywood notion that if a friend can't accept you for who you are, then they have no business being your friend. To this day, I find it remarkable that I can liken issues such as social identity with the conscious choice to speak with an accent.
It wasn't long until I realized that even the accent that I had chosen was not genuine. Nothing forces you to realize that you're not actually speaking in an American accent like actually moving to America. Americans have a natural bluntness about them when they speak, that I love. "What is that accent?", I was asked in my early months in the United States. "I'm actually from New Zealand", I'd respond, ultimately avoiding the question, as if being from New Zealand warrants the bastardizing of American culture (there is irony in this statement). It was these early months in America that I realized that cultural identity was more complicated than I had previously thought, and was not, believe it or not, just a collection of commonalities between groups of people. Someone is bound to ask "oh, you're from New Zealand? But you're-" and before they can continue with an uncomfortable, borderline racist observation, I rescue them with "-And I was born in the Philippines, I grew up in New Zealand". I excuse whatever is implied by "Ah, I was going to say" because I'm sure whatever they were going to say was fantastic.
This was an appropriate lesson to learn, given the melting-pot background of the United States. I kept these assertions private, however, as I often don't like to express too many self-discoveries lest they be unoriginal or misled. Instead, I choose to bask in the perceptions of others. "Can you please talk in a New Zealand accent?", people will ask, and more often than not, I will refuse. I'd rather they hold on to their opinion of how cool the New Zealand accent is, as opposed to my ruining it for them completely. Yes, New Zealand is a fantastic place, but not fantastic in the way you would think. I see it is a marvelous place to one day retire, but I won't stop you from thinking of it as a playground for adventure, forests, hobbits, and reckless abandon. Neither will I refuse your changing your opinion of me based on this slightly incorrect misconception. I do this because, I've come to accept the fact that I am, quite possibly, just a little bit eccentric.