Spring Time with the Family: A Lament
Zachary Norton
Issue date: 4/20/05 Section: features
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Versus Magazine Online [Image based format]
While many Vanderbilt students this past March found solace in sun-soaked sands or pristine ski slopes, I took part in a time-honored family ritual - the Norton Spring Break.
Before I dive into the depths of repressed memory to de-mystify this familial rite, readers should be aware that I, Zachary Michael Norton, am the black sheep of my clan. I am not the kind of black sheep that gets confined to a dilapidated shed and whispered about behind closed doors, but I am conspicuously different from the rest of my family. I enjoy the humanities. I am apathetic toward partisan politics and organized religion. I am not a competitive athlete and I do not keep obsessive tabs on the sports section's relentless barrage of scores, statistics, and game histories. And while I refuse to suffer the social trappings of North Carolina's southern aristocracy, I am more than happy to endure the communal stigma that comes with enjoying speculative fiction, cult film, and indie rock.
It would be nice if these proclivities were universally accepted. Unfortunately, my nihilism and dubious interests are egregious compared to the inflexible pragmatism of my parents and only sister. My father, Colonel Doctor Michael Norton, is a West Point graduate with a bachelor's in engineering, a Wake Forest Medical Degree, and one term of Vietnam War experience under his belt. He takes me pistol shooting every time I come home. My mother, now a grandmother and homemaker, is a former Jersey-Girl army brat who moved twenty-three times before she was thirty years old. She speaks three languages with uncanny fluency and dreams of owning an affordable condominium in New York City. My sister, who can excuse herself from Norton Spring Break nowadays, is an ex-sorority girl and thirteen years my senior. She is happily married to a Chapel Hill fraternity brother and now focuses on raising my two rough-and-tumble nephews, Tucker and Cooper. Each member of this truncated section of the Norton clan is conservative, conscientious, and pious. It's no real surprise that we fight tooth and nail whenever I return home.