If you’re a regular reader you know I’m absolutely fascinated by perspective. And there’s nothing quite like the perspective of a TCK (third culture kid).
Haven’t heard that term before? A third culture kid ‘is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture’ according to sociologist David C. Pollock.
Here are some signs of being a TCK from Buzzfeed’s 31 Signs You’re A Third Culture Kid :
1. You can curse convincingly in at least 5 different languages.
2. To everyone’s confusion, your accent changes depending on who you’re talking to.
3. And you often slip foreign slang into your English by mistake, which makes you unintelligible to most people.
6. You start getting birthday wishes several hours before your birthday, from your friends farther east than you.
13. And your circle of best friends is as politically, racially, and religiously diverse as the United Nations.
16. You’ve had the most rigorous sensitivity training of all: real life.
8. You know that McDonald’s tastes drastically different from country to country.
30. You know better than anyone else that “home” isn’t a place, it’s the people in it.
31. And you can’t wait to see where your life adventure takes you next.
And my favourite …
8. You have a love-hate relationship with the question “Where are you from?”
If you’re, ahem, of a certain age, you’ll likely recall Dustin Hoffman’s famous role in the Oscar-winning, movie Tootsie. He plays an out-of-work actor who dresses up as a woman to land a job.
