Words are powerful

Something Else

Sharing Stories
June 19, 2022 at 5:32 p.m.
Virginia and her dachshund, Maxie.
Virginia and her dachshund, Maxie.
...by Virginia Serna

“Something Else”

How does it feel to be something else?
Is it good?
Is it bad?

How would you feel if, on national television, your people
were listed as “something else”?
Broadcast to the entire world in the election results…
insulted, belittled, feeling like nothing?

Would you laugh it off with wry humor?
Take it as a Badge of Honor?
Proudly wearing that t-shirt proclaiming,
“We used to be ‘other,’ now we are ‘something else.’”

Why are we something else?  Why were we “other”?
Did we so scare the colonizers that they needed to belittle us?
Remove us? Make us unseen?

They have failed.

We are seen, heard, and coming back stronger…
from the lessons they have taught us.

Virginia Serna is in Ariele’s Thursday ZOOM Writing Group through Seattle’s Greenwood Senior Center. She wrote this for her children who are indigenous. They were called “Something Else” in the news reporting the election of 2020. In other words, other categories were named specifically, while Indigenous peoples were simply “something else.”

SHARING STORIES is a weekly column for and about the 50 plus crowd living in the Puget Sound region. Send your stories and photos to ariele@comcast.net. Tell local or personal stories; discuss concerns around aging and other issues; share solutions, good luck, and reasons to celebrate; poems are fine too. Pieces may be edited or excerpted. We reserve the right to select among pieces. Photos are always a plus and a one-sentence bio is requested (where you live, maybe age or career, retired status, etc.).
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