My family had to move to Kansas during the summer of 2001. I was coming up on my 17th birthday. My dad's mom lived in El Dorado at the time, and we decided we'd live with her for a short time until we could get settled. My dad, my sister, and I drove in a Uhaul for two days halfway across the country before we arrived on Aug. 17. My mom joined us a little later.
We had a great life in California. I grew up with incredible friends at Living Way, the private K-8 school my sister and I attended. My mom worked at the school, too. My parents had a lot of good friends who had kids, and we all formed really close groups over the years. When my parents told us we were going to move away, it was shocking. I was finishing up my sophomore year at Duarte High School, a public school that was quite a change from the private-school life, but I learned to adapt. Now I'd need to adapt again. But for my mother, whose entire family lived in Cali (and still do), and for my sister, it was a major life change that proved to be incredibly difficult.
I wasn't as close to my high school friends as I was to my Living Way friends, so I wasn't as attached. It wasn't going to be an easy change for me, but I honestly don't remember feeling that scared about it.
Now, 18 years later, I'm still here. I've lived in Kansas about six months longer than I lived in Cali. I actually crossed the threshold last fall, when I first had the idea for this blog site, but it wasn’t until now that I had enough time needed to put this blog post together.
Days after moving to town, I was thrown into El Dorado High School without knowing a single kid or teacher. It was a lot to get used to. I didn't know my way around the school. They set up classes in blocks: only going to a class every other day, but for a lot longer duration. Why would anyone run a school this way (maybe because teachers here are far more long-winded)? Having every class every day on the same schedule was much easier. With the block schedule, it probably took me more time than most just to remember what I last learned the two days prior. Apparently on the first day of school, teachers expected you to remember a lot from the prior year, because we had a brutal amount of work the first day. During my first math class, my teacher, a very elderly gentleman, picked on me for not understanding how things worked and thought I was already going to fall behind. It was only after I excused myself to go to the bathroom before he realized I was a new kid who wasn't even from Kansas.
What a great start to school in Kansas: a total embarrassment. Things didn't get much better at El Dorado, either. I'm so glad I eventually transferred out of that school over to Augusta High School later that semester. I never really made any friends at El Do. It pretty much sucked the whole time. Anyway, enough of the pity party.
It was only weeks into the school year when the terrorist attacks in New York took down the Twin Towers. I remember I was in my history teacher's class when someone burst into the room and told him to turn on the TV (it was nice to have TVs with cable in the classroom. There weren't many of those in Duarte). Needless to say, we didn't get much schooling done that day, and I believe we didn't have school the next day or two.
The way Cali high schools set up their curriculum was ahead of Kansas. Not to toot my own horn, but I won the Math Student of the Year honor my freshman year at Duarte after acing Geometry. I was in the running my sophomore year, as well. My freshman biology teacher was known for being extremely tough, but I got a 90 on her first test, and that was including questions on evolution, which they taught as fact. I scored a 1433 on the SAT. But in Kansas, everything was behind one year. And here, it's the ACT (I scored a 33 on that, but I think the SAT was a more apt, relevant test). As a junior, I took physics, which was meant for seniors. I also had trigonometry, but I had brief exposure to that during Algebra II in Cali. I was incredibly good at math and science stuff. I loved statistics (mostly the sports kind, but eventually stats of every kind). I was convinced I would get into that field at some point.
For some reason, though, I took a different turn. At EHS, I took an architecture class, and I was doing well in physics and trig (much to the amazement of that teacher), but I liked my English class the most, by far. Our year-long project was to put together a mini-anthology of various types of works that we would write throughout the year. It was really cool. My English teacher was the saddest one to see me leave when I showed the transfer slip. I really enjoyed writing in that class, though, which was the start of a pathway God took me down that shaped a lot of the person I turned into.
But the time to switch schools was right. My parents found a nice apartment big enough for the four of us in Augusta, just down the street from the high school. More importantly, we found a church we liked. It was small at the time, maybe 50 or 60 people (It has a few hundred pretty consistently nowadays!). That was a lot different since I was used to churches with thousands of people. I loved the youth group - I made my two best friends in that group - and I loved the Senior Pastor and the two youth pastors at the time. I knew I was in the right place.
Still, I had to make a good impression. They had to know where I was from. I wasn't afraid to wear my hats sideways (pretty standard in Cali) on youth nights. I wore stylish sneakers. My first day at Augusta High School, I wore bright blue surfer-dude shorts. Some friends thought they looked like swimming trunks. If only they knew; man, everyone wore those kind of shorts in Cali. In Kansas, everyone was boring and wore jeans, plaid shirts, and boots. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I eventually dialed it down, but a part of my soul went into hibernation.
Music was incredibly different. Lots of twang, not a lot of flows. At a later point at AHS, when I was a senior, I wrote a debate column in the school paper about why rap was better than rock or country music. It didn't go over too well. But let's be honest. Kansas isn't the most culturally diverse place in the country.
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed Augusta High. I got involved and made friends. In an ironic twist, I even figured out what I wanted to do in college, which had nothing to do with math or science. I remember sitting on a bus ride on the way to a math relay, reading a magazine, and thinking to myself "I want to start my own magazine someday." (Side trail: I actually came pretty close to that. I helped name the sports magazine we started at the Butler County Times-Gazette newspaper when I was the Editor in Chief there in 2017, and I shaped the content that would appear in it, but I left for my current job at Curo a month or two before the first one published).
I was getting used to life in a teeny tiny small town. Mostly.
It was a town where everyone knew everyone else, yet it was still incredibly clickish. It was a town where you will run into someone you know at Dillon's and practically be forced to stop and talk to them. You know, because otherwise it would be rude to just move on with your day. That took a ton of getting used to. So did the pop-in. Apparently, people are friendly enough to be okay with friends coming over unannounced from time to time. To be fair, those people mostly held out of the texting movement at the time. In Cali, you don't make small talk with the cashier at Wal-Mart; otherwise, they'll just interrupt you and wonder when they asked for your life story while people behind you get upset at you for taking so long. Everything moves slower here. It seemed like some (usually older) people in Kansas sure enjoyed hearing themselves talk quite a bit (no offense to anyone; it’s just that this was a huge change to get used to). The first time I got stuck in a conversation in public where the other person simply wouldn't stop chatting, I was genuinely taken aback. I also learned that saying goodbye to a group of people really just means you're only available for about another hour before you truly have to leave.
Small towns like Augusta seemingly have so little to do for fun (not true), yet it's perfect for raising children. And let's be honest. Wichita is little more than a big small town. I remember a few years ago, I read some article where Wichita was ranked the worst-dressed big city in the country. But that's because it isn't a big city. It's just a big small town. If you have to sit at a light for more than a couple cycles, that's considered traffic. That's not exactly the city life. As far as fashion, I will say that the first time my family went to a wedding (in Augusta), we rolled up in our best clothes and were the best dressed people there. We couldn't fathom how casually people dressed for weddings! Most people wore jeans and a simple button-up shirt. What?! It's true. In recent years, though, I've been to several weddings, and it seems like the younger generation has improved in this area.
People are incredibly nice and courteous, and I know there would be a legion of friends willing to step up and help me if I got in a jam. At gatherings, "The more, the merrier" is pretty standard, which is awesome. Half the time, it isn’t about what you’re doing, or where you’re going, it’s just about being with your friends, often times doing stupid stuff at that age (this is mostly true anywhere). I didn’t care, I loved it. There’s such a better sense of community.
I didn't know how to celebrate the Fourth of July before moving to Kansas. In Cali, you mostly have to resort to watching fireworks from afar. Not here. You get to spend hundreds of dollars and set off your own fireworks to your heart's content. It's been so much fun blowing up stuff with friends over the years. Kansas is far more patriotic than Cali.
There were plenty of other culture shocks I had to get used to. For example, what do teenagers do for fun in Augusta? Well, they go mudding, of course. Apparently that was a real term. But my friend had a huge truck to ride in at the time, so that made it fun. Cow tipping is a thing, though as a Californian who'd only heard of such tales, it seems more mythical than common practice even here. I'll tell you what isn't mythical though: The Yellow Brick Road. Seeing that sign on Highway 54 for the first time was an experience.
Certain quirky things bother me more than they should. Firstly, it's soda, not pop. Apparently puppy chow is also a food for humans. If you live in Kansas at all, you live in the country. There are just further-away, more remote portions of the country in some areas. Those areas probably are more remote because of the gigantic, mutated bugs that can kill you in your sleep. I learned that the world’s biggest ball of twine is something to be proud of. Apparently it’s more fun chasing after tornadoes than, you know, running for your life. Living in two-story houses in Kansas really translates to a ground-level floor and a basement for that reason (oddly enough, having a two-story house in Cali means one floor on top of the ground-level floor, even though earthquakes are common).
People here care far more about college sports than professional sports. To be fair, some friends in Cali loved college teams more, but that wasn’t nearly as common, and it certainly wasn't true for me. Part of that is because I had a great pro sports team to latch onto. And I get it. The Royals and Chiefs weren’t quite as good back then (The Royals, of course, have won a World Series title since then, and Chiefs fans think they’re witnessing the second coming of Jesus Christ at their quarterback position, so there are greener pastures ahead for them). I’d never root for a different pro football team, but I knew I had to pick a college team, and since Wichita State doesn’t have a football team, the only options were K-State and KU. Naturally I chose Texas. Turned out to be a good decision, because a couple years later, the Longhorns beat USC in the national title game. In SoCal, you mostly either root for UCLA or USC, and I was Bruins fan. Seeing USC lose made Texas’ win all the sweeter (plus I absolutely despite Pete Carroll). Now I root for the Shockers in everything else. But overall, I still don’t care a whole lot about college sports.
Driving is completely different. Kids can get their license at a younger age, which is a scary thought. Going from town to town was boring; there's nothing to see on the road. Just a bunch of flatlands. Cali had mountains in plain sight from my bedroom window. I also learned that road kill is totally normal. When I went to Butler County Community College (now it's just BCC), our football team made the national championship game (Go Grizzlies). So ESPN gave us some national coverage. The lede of their feature story? The amount of dead animals all over every road. I don't even want to get into driving in the snow on icy roads. That's some freaky stuff, man. Winter is something I'll never get used to. Everyone here loves snow and thinks it's so pretty. Yeah, maybe for five minutes before it melts and turns into dirty, slushy, ugly mud that sticks around for days. Winter also is way too cold, and my skin hates the dryness. I would prefer hot, sticky summers to that every day of the week (I miss the dry heat of Cali). Of course, I could do without the wind all year long. In Duarte, I could hop the wall in our backyard and immediately be in a nice big park. I shot hoops for hours most days for several years. Yeah, shooting hoops outside in Kansas is a lost cause half the time.
I'll never forget the first time I went back to California. My cousins immediately recognized a twang in my voice that I never noticed I picked up! No, I didn't pronounce it "warsh" instead of "wash" (so many phantom 'R' sounds!), but I suddenly found out I struggled with the full "-ing" pronunciation of some words, and I started saying “Y’all”. Maybe I should move to Australia and pick up on that accent.
All differences aside (I’m not saying one is better than the other, so please don’t take anything I’ve said that way), I am very thankful God brought me to Kansas. I met the most incredibly woman, and she is now my wife. I have great family out here (ironically, one of my cousins moved from Missouri to Cali a few years ago, and he’s loving it. No surprise). I have a legion of friends whom I wouldn’t trade for anything. I was blessed to attend Butler for two years on a full ride. I was blessed to attend a great university at WSU while living at home; I graduated college with zero debt. My senior year there is one of the best years of my life. I proudly was the sports editor at the Augusta newspaper for many years, which always will be my favorite job I’ve ever had or ever will have.
Sure, I wish I didn't have to live without so many things I loved in Cali. Seeing mountains everywhere was great. I loved trips to the beach. Disneyland and Six Flags Magic Mountain weren't too far (Kansas' theme parks aren't as grand, and the drive to nearby parks is quite long). Mexican restaurants are better. Weather was infinitely better. But there are things in Kansas I wouldn’t want to live without, now. For the longest time, I made the Warren Theatre my second home; it even topped the Pacific Hastings Theatre in Pasadena (Of course, now I go to the AMC more). There are plenty of niche places to eat. It's mostly peaceful and quiet here. Life here has been great. I wanted to make the most of my circumstances, and that decision definitely paid off. I'll always tell people I'm from California, but I'm very much okay with living in Kansas.
