The Real South Park

Where a person comes from can determine a lot about that person’s life. The region a person is living in determines who many of their friends are, where they go to school, and even how they speak. A region can embody various values which can then be transferred on to the people living there. I come from a small town called South Park in southwestern Pennsylvania. This is not the South Park one might see characterized on the popular television show entitled South Park; it is indeed quite different from that. As a lifelong resident of South Park, I have noticed an assortment of values embodied by the town; values which I have noticed even more so since coming to college and being exposed to the varying different values of the regions of my colleagues.

Geographically, South Park is about 30 minutes away from the city of Pittsburgh. Oftentimes when people ask me where I am from, I don’t know whether to say South Park or to just say Pittsburgh, because I feel much attached to both. Pittsburgh has a major influence on the values of South Park. In fact, my town is part of a larger country, “Steeler Country,” that is. Many avid Pittsburgh Penguin and Pirate fans also contribute to the makeup of the city. Any given Friday during the Steeler season or any day when the “Pens” are playing a game in the Stanley Cup playoffs is sure to be a “Black and Gold” day in the schools. South Park is affected by Pittsburgh in many more ways. We speak the language of Pittsburgh (or at least a mild version of it) known as “Pittsburghese.” For example, the real name of our favorite football team is obviously the “Picksburgh Stillers.” Finally, as its suburb, South Park inherits the comradeship and friendliness exhibited by the people of Pittsburgh.

As for exactly what kind of suburb it is, South Park can be classified as middle class. In high school, we knew we weren’t the “rich kids” like Upper St. Clair, Peters Township, or Mt. Lebanon. At the same time we realized that we were still decently well off, and that a lot of the schools we competed with had a much larger lower-class population than we did. Like every town, there are different neighborhoods with different income levels. For example, the ranch house that I lived in until I was nine would be considered now to be in one of the shadier parts of South Park, even though it never seemed like it to me at the time. My new house, which happens to only be about three minutes away from my old one, is probably considered to be in the upper-middle of the spectrum. At the same time, I am still not living in one of the “fancy” new plans on the other side of South Park. Just because there are different sections of town, however, does not mean that the people don’t intermingle. It is true that people tend to form relationships with people in their immediate neighborhood because they live closer together and therefore have easy access to each other. Nevertheless, I have friends from all over town. While we all have our differences, the people of South Park are for the most part very accepting of the people around them.

By accepting one another the people of the town have grown very close, developing community spirit. One thing I always noticed about South Park is the pride we have in our town, sometimes known as “Eagle Pride.” The most obvious example of this is in the schools. South Park High School is the base of most of the sports teams in the district. The fact that it is a AA school never stopped the students from being passionate about their sports. We were always very competitive; within my time at South Park High School, the football and girls soccer teams won a state championship each, the boys soccer team had won two, and there were multiple district and section championships, including the track team who were three time undefeated section champions. The students were always very supportive of each other in their athletic ventures. Besides having Black and Gold Fridays, we often had Blue and White Fridays in support of our sports teams. Even in the elementary school, the kids were always excited for the coming week’s football game. It wasn’t only the students, however, that had Eagle Pride. Through the years, I was surprised to learn how much the community got involved in South Park athletics. Most of the people who attended the football games and other sporting events weren’t students but just our friends and neighbors in the community. People that I didn’t even know would sometimes come up to me and congratulate me on a performance at a previous track meet, because even when the people didn’t actually go to the sporting events, they still liked to read about it in the paper or hear about it somewhere else. The competitive spirit in South Park continues to bring the people together and increase community spirit.

Another example of the town coming together, which leads to another value that South Park seems to embody, is community service and the motivation to help others in general. I’m sure this is the same in a lot of towns, but I’ve always been impressed by the willingness of the people to help each other. For example, during the recent blizzard most of the power in South Park went out, including the power on the street where my house is located. My next door neighbor happened to have a generator, but instead of using it all for himself to keep his own house fully powered, he let my family and the other families around him plug into it so that we could all have enough power to plug in a few necessities. Also, despite the fact that teenagers are usually looked at as selfish, even the high school students in my town take part in helping out; the Interact club (a community service organization) at South Park High School was at one time the largest in the country, and about half of the student population of the school currently participates in it.

I have to say that I really do love my town. It’s not one of those towns where “everybody knows everybody” because it is a little too big for that, but I would say that I know a good majority of the town and I am always seeing familiar faces. I think this is a good size because it’s not so small that everyone is in everyone’s business, yet a lot of people have been there for awhile and do get to know a lot of people. I enjoy getting to know all the people because I think that most of the people are genuinely nice and almost everyone gets along. South Park obviously has its imperfections, but I suppose that every town does. As an aspiring history teacher, my dream situation would be to get to go back to South Park High School and teach. That school really helped shape the person I am today, and I would love to do that for future students. The reason it was really able to shape me as a person was because it embodied so many characteristics of South Park as a whole: characteristics, I believe, which are very important ones to have. Being a Pittsburgher, living the middle-class lifestyle, having competitiveness and “Eagle Pride,” and having the drive to help others while having an overall great sense of community are all values of South Park and are major parts of the person I am today.

The Meaning of Green

There are no two people exactly alike. Even identical twins, who share the same set of genes, have differences. It is not surprising then that people often have different takes on words, despite those words oftentimes having concrete dictionary definitions. People tend to disagree less about some words than others. However, one case in which the meaning of words draws more conflict is when these words have to do with something controversial. During the past few decades, talk over the environment and government policies has resulted in divisive opinions. A word often heard in the language of the environment is the word “green.” What exactly is it to be “green?”

The American Heritage dictionary contains over 70,000 entries. One of them happens to be the word “green.” In this dictionary, green is defined as: “n. 1a. any of a group of colors whose hue is that of growing grass. b. The hue of the visible spectrum lying between yellow and blue. 2. greens Leafy plants or plant parts used as food or for decoration. 3. A grassy lawn or plot: a putting green. adj. –er, est 1. Of the color green. 2. Covered with green growth or foliage. 3. Made with leafy vegetables. 4. Not mature or ripe. 5. Inexperienced.” While these are the definitions that may first come to mind when a person hears the word “green,” none of them necessarily define the word in the sense that it is being discussed here. At the same time, environmentalists who coined this version of the word did not choose the word “green” out of thin air.

Part of the dictionary definition of green says that a green is a plant. However, even the section about green being a color refers to one of the plants seen around the world, grass. Environmentalists took these connotations of the word in order to form a new meaning for the word for their own use. In the environmental sense of the word, green is used as an adjective, as in “to be green.” This does not mean to be naive or inexperienced. It is not literally to be the color green or to be a plant, although both of these things share part of the meaning. Rather than literally being the color green or being a plant, to be “green” is to be a supporter of those things, and more particularly, the environment. This does not mean that people who are green are supporters of the color green, more that they are supportive of things that are the color green (such as grass, contained within green’s definition) and use this color as their rallying color and symbol. If, perhaps, the grass, trees, and other plants were red, the word being discussed here would instead be “red”.

There are different ways of being “green.” A person can be green. A person who is green cares about the environment and practices environmentally friendly behaviors. They may be called “eco-friendly.” Those who are green wish to waste as little energy as possible and hope to leave a small ecological footprint on the earth, leaving little damage to it behind. One is said to “go green” if they begin practicing environmentally friendly behaviors consistent with a “green” lifestyle. Not only can individual people be green, collections of people, such as factories, companies, businesses, groups, etc. can be considered green. Whether these companies really want to be green or are seeking to attract the environmentally-friendly audience is debatable. For example, some companies may claim to be “going green” by producing more eco-friendly products, such as Aquafina has done recently with water bottles. Along with people, actions themselves can be considered green. Commonly thought of actions that are considered green are recycling and saving water. People may take it a step further by purchasing a hybrid car, using compact fluorescent or LED light bulbs (as opposed to incandescent), or using a water filter instead of drinking water bottles. Finally, objects and places can be considered green. As previously mentioned, there are green cars and water bottles. Within the past few years, supermarkets have been offering for sale “green” reusable shopping bags to be used in place of the plastics ones currently given out. There are many buildings that are said to have gone green. These buildings use resources such as water and energy more efficiently than normal ones do and try to reduce their overall impact on the environment. They might for example, employ solar energy.

As with advocates of many things, there is a wide spectrum when it comes to how “green” a person is. Some people may just recycle or not let the water run while brushing their teeth. Others, however, may be a little more involved with the cause and only purchase products made out of biodegradable materials and eat only organic foods. In addition, there are many people who are not green at all. There are many believers of the claims that theories such as global warming are all scams created by scientists or the government. Therefore, these people do not practice green policies at all, and in fact sometimes act in ways to spite them.
As previously mentioned, the dictionary definition of “green” in The American Heritage, a printed dictionary, did not have the definition of the word “green” as it is being discussed here. Curiously enough, however, when one looks at an online version of a dictionary, such as The Free Dictionary, the last definition provided is, “7. Green A supporter of a social and political movement that espouses global environmental protection, bioregionalism, social responsibility, and nonviolence” (Green 1). Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that further down the page on the website, it references the same edition of The American Heritage from which the original definition was taken. It is certainly noteworthy that the more modern definition of the word is contained in the more modern form of media (note also that this occurrence was not because the print dictionary was an old version). One should also notice that the website capitalized “Green” for this definition, as if it is an official title, such as “Republican” or “Christian.” Finally, from this online definition it is shown that the term “green” has branched out even more, becoming a social movement and referring not only to taking care of the earth, but to taking care of the people on it as well. The green movement has also merged with other things, such as healthy living in general (for example, eating organic foods is good for the environment and the body) and the idea that to live “green” is to save “green,” in reference to money (for example, turning the thermostat up a few degrees in the summer and down a few degrees in the winter).

The word “green” has a multitude of meanings. Something that is green is considered a reference to the environment through the environment’s association with the color green. Many people and things can be green or go green. By understanding this most recent meaning of the word, one can begin to understand many more things involving the environmental movement.

*Picture found at http://blogs.whattheythink.com/going-green/2009/05/checklist-for-going-green

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