No Such Thing As Normal :: Real Indians Eat Jello Native Americans Essays

No Such Thing As NormalWhat is normal? It can be defined as average or regular. Many people see normal as how the media portrays it in television shows. Generally, the normal family is made up of twain parents, two point five children (preferably at least one girl and one boy) and a beloved deary. They in like manner usually have a minivan or an SUV, a white picket fence and live in a nice, neatly organized home. My family has some of those traits, but not all. There is no much(prenominal) thing as a normal family because normal families are usually viewed as perfect and they rarely have problems. In the reading Real Indians sweep away Jell-O by Laurie Carlson, the narrator is a Native American who lives in a trailer park. She reads books that explain what normal Indians are like and what they do. She notices that the people she reads about live in deserts, have out-of-the-ordinary pets, have wise grandparents and are have supernatural powers. Meanwhile, she lives in a mobile h ome, watches TV and has a gossipy nan who makes Jell-O salad. When she asks her grandmother why they dont act like the people shes read about, her grandmother tells her Honey, be yourself (Carlson par. 7). The grandmother doesnt want the narrator to feel she has to act in a certain way just because media demands it. This is similar to my family because we dont feel we have to be perfect. We see the way media portrays the normal family but we dont change ourselves to be the same way. There are many reasons why my family is normal and not so normal in the medias eyes. We have a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch home. We have a ravishing yard (without a fence) and three vehicles, one of which is a Ford Explorer. I have two heterosexual parents, two siblings (one sister and one brother) and a pet dog. That, however, is where the similarities end. My father had been divorced when he met my mother at their workplace. He is 20 years older than my mother, which is a rare occurrence in famili es today. He also had two adopted children, though they lived with their mother. After they got married my parents had our three-bedroom, one-bathroom (later two-bath) ranch home built. In 1982 they decided to adopt a baby and in 1984 they got me.