Kimberly Richman

Self-Reflection

I have always grown up in small-town Iowa. I went to school in a small town of about 2500 people. My graduating class was the size of 60 students. I have always seen Iowa as a friendly, yet conservative place to raise a family.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I began working at Best Buy. I became the first female Sales Manager to be employed within the company. I thought that was a pretty amazing deal. At that time, there were over 50 Best Buy stores in the United States. Through my experience at that time with Best Buy, I had the opportunity to do lots of sales training. This allowed me to meet with lots of people from coast to coast. I discovered that people from the other coasts (especially the east) were often seen by others as brash and sometimes even harsh. Some of the difference that I noticed was that people from the coastal states did not readily give eye contact and if and when they did, the eye contact did not “linger”. These people also were not quick to start conversations with others about topics outside the realm of work. Also, these people did not tend to readily show or share their emotions. These are, of course, broad generalizations. However, they are generalizations that I made from observing and viewing multiple encounters time and time again in countless situations.

This did give me the impression that Iowans must somehow be nurtured or socialized differently. How else could they turn out to be so different from others?

As a young child, my life was pretty routine. I attended school each day and was expected to get good grades. Extracurricular activities were encouraged and I signed up for many and really enjoyed a diverse array along the way. I also attended the Methodist Church in the town where I grew up. I went to Sunday School with Kathie, my sister who was two years my junior. I really enjoyed the Sunday School program. The teachers and administrators

always kept it fun. They always had crafts to go along with the Bible themes and there were songs and great snacks. (Or, come to think of it, at this time, maybe things were so boring elsewhere that Sunday School just seemed to totally rock, I don’t know…)

My sister and I were raised together in a two-level ranch home. I remember spending much of my young life playing outdoors. “Safety” was not the concern back then that as it is today. My sister and I rode our bikes without helmets. In fact, back then it would have been difficult to find helmets in stores. We even played with toys like lawn darts! Wow! Talk about changes in time and priorities!

We would stay outdoors until it was really dark and do things like catch fireflies. We could call them “lightning bugs”. We would put them in empty and cleaned out peanut butter jars. They would light up the jars and the night sky as we would catch so many! Those were fun days and evenings.

Our Iowa days in the summer were filled with activities like “Kool-Aid Stands”. My dad built us our own stand so that we could use it year after year. It was so fun to sit there and peddle our fresh wares to the neighbors, the local pedestrians, and the mail carrier who happened by! We would also invest our summer days in games and activities like “super hero” play. My sister and I would get together with the neighborhood children and we’d all take different roles. Some of us would be villains and others would be the good guys or super heroes. It was your traditional good guy vs. bad guy play and it summed up my summer days honestly from the time I was allowed to play independently outdoors until about the second grade. I still have the fondest memories of these times and my sister and I still reminisce about them.

As a young Iowan, it was important to work hard and to get good grades. I remember always being on the honor roll. I always enjoyed school and always looked forward to going each day. My sister did not feel the same way, though. I remember being in the third grade when my sister was in the first. We only lived two blocks away from the school. When we came home from school, we

would both unload our backpacks and show our parents our homework and our graded assignments from our teacher.

Well, it had been a couple of weeks, and my sister, Kathie had not been providing very much in her backpack for my mom and dad to view in the afternoon. They would ask her how she was doing at school. She would simply tell a little fib and say, “Great!”

My mom was beginning to catch on to her and was not buying the empty backpack routine. One particular Monday afternoon that my sister and I returned home (when my sister had plopped down a very lightweight backpack), my mom decided to approach the guilty party.

“Kathie,” she said, “Kim has a backpack that has lots of graded assignments inside. Those grades look pretty good. I looked in your backpack and there are no assignments. What’s been going on?”

Kathie seemed nervous. She trembled a little and appeared to panic. “I’ve been getting good grades.”

“Where is your work?”

“I dunno…”

“You don’t know? What does that mean?” My mom quizzed her matter-of-factly and very patiently.

My sister knew that everything was about to hit the fan. As much as we can fight sometimes because we are indeed siblings, I felt great empathy for her. What would happen next???

“Well, all I know is that I am getting really good grades, just like Kim”, Kathie retorted.

“Okay, okay,” my mom replied. “Follow me, Girls.” My mom then put a jacket on herself and on each of us and walked us up to the school. Were we going to be going up to talk to my sister’s teacher or maybe to the principal? Wow! She must be angrier than I had thought. This was intense! Not a word

was said. We held hands. There was nothing but silent footsteps and anticipation.

A few short minutes later, we were a block and a half away from our house, only a half-block away from our elementary school. To our left was a large Victorian house bordered with a silver chain-linked fence. My mom began reaching between the openings in the fence to reach for crumpled up bits of paper. One, and then another and then another. It took a while for it to click for me. Then my sister’s face turned a bright crimson with embarrassment. (Maybe she was trying to plan out her last days on earth.)

I had finally figured it out. My sly little sister had been trashing her ill-graded papers on the other side of this fence, thinking she had been disposing of the evidence! Now, the gig was up! My mom was collecting each and every piece of this collection and my sister would have much explaining to do when we would get back home.

As I got older, I would be able to make even more discoveries for myself about what it might mean to be an Iowan.

For example, one of my first really good friends as a young adult I made shortly after I began to get out on my own. He was a young man from Connecticut named Bix Hopewell. Bix had an amazing sense of humor and we hit it off immediately. However, I was soon surprised to find out that most who met Bix (native Iowans, anyway) did not form a good first impression of him.

People would often ask me, “Kimberly, how can you take him? He’s so full of himself. He’s got an attitude all of the time!”

I just never saw things that way. They (the general Iowa public) were misreading Bix’s personality. What others (who didn’t invest the time to get to know him) saw as arrogance or an attitude was an outgoing sense of humor.

I think on both coasts people are used to being more direct, more outgoing, and less politically correct than we are here in Iowa. Bix never tried to

offend anyone. It was just that because of these cultural misgivings that Bix was severely misunderstood and had a difficult time making friends in Iowa.

I felt that at times with my friend, Bix, I needed to assume the role of mediator in order to help others appreciate him for the wonderful, well-rounded, and gifted person that he was. Bix, you see, did not speak fluent “Iowan” or “Iowa-ese” and because of this there were social drawbacks. I did spend enough time in my early twenties in this mediator role that I began to have a greater acceptance and understanding of the differences among people, even trivial differences in body language or mannerisms.

In conclusion, I think there are many things that make Iowans different. We Iowans are family. In my opinion, we are extremely friendly. We are a safer place to raise a family than most anywhere else and our crime rates show that. Iowa is about comfort and about peacefulness. It’s about giving eye contact and being able to ask for help when you need it. Iowa is HOME.