#4 This is the hardest blog ever.

   My parents are your ordinary white parents, but no so white they'd be considered rednecks. Yes we own guns, no we don't hunt, yes we fish, no we don't have Duck Dynasty beards, and yes we have a truck (mine), but no we don't blare deep south "hick" music from it or go mudding with it. We are a typical white family and i try to honor that, sometimes, by doing (almost) everything my parents have asked me to do.

   First off, my parents were musically inclined and did band all the way through high school. They wanted me to get into music so I started taking piano lessons in kindergarten. I took lessons all the way up until this year, I had to decide between football and piano and football was the obvious choice. My parents also wanted me to be in band so I joined percussion, but hated it and quit after 8th grade. I tried to honor my parents musical culture but it just wasn't for me.

   In addition, my family likes to stay connected with our extended family as much as possible. I do my best to honor this by giving my grandparents a call ever so often or sending the occasional text to my aunts and uncles to catch up on things. I absolutely love talking with family because I barely get to see them. Family is the key unit in life and without family life is empty. It is these little conversations we have every once in a while that keep us connected until we can see each other during the holidays and it is the moments from the holidays that will be remembered forever. By honoring this for my parents it allows for our families to stay together even though we are so far apart.

   Finally, my family has made a culture of attending the University of Texas in Austin for college. I plan on honoring this by applying there this year. If I don't go to UT I would be the only one to not go there in my family. Everyone, including my brother right now, has gone to UT and I plan on honoring this culture they have created by going there too. I will honor this culture but will create my own identity by finding "who I am" up there.

   Families try to enforce everything on their kids and some may actually stick, like the UT thing and staying connected with family did for me, but some may not fall through the cracks, like the music thing for me. The hard part in life is finding the middle ground of being who your parents want you to be while becoming your own person. My parents are white and we don't have a redneck culture like some may think all white people have. My family doesn't really have any special culture which I think makes us the way we are.