Mice to Neet You = Nice to Meet You

Do you ever feel like not meeting new people? I do sometimes, only because I always have to get into my wholef life biography within the first 5 minutes of meeting someone. Sometimes its fine because it keeps the conversation going and it goes off on tangents and comes back again. And then it ends with something like, "Great. Well it was mice to neet you...David.". Mice to Neet You?! The simple question, "So where are you from?" is supposed to be just that a simle question with a simple answer that starts out something like this:

Stranger 1: "So where ya from?" (Because no one says where ARE you from, its usually sowhereyafrom...)
Stranger 2: "From (insert the same of some obscure town near a big city). It's near (some big city)".
Stranger 1: "Oh cool. My cousin's friend lives there. I hear its a prett cool city."
Stranger 2: "Yeah, there's some cool bars and stuff."

That's what I hear all the time. That question used to be simple for me. My strategy is that I was always from the country I was living in. If I was visiting Disney World and I met someone there I'd say I'm from Costa Rica because that's where my bedroom was and my clothes were and that's where my high school was. But this strategy failed me when my parents moved to Colombia while I was away at college in Spain and I didn't have a room in the room house they moved into. Then when I moved to Boston I was suddenly not from anywhere at all. I wasn't from Costa Rica because my family didn't live there anymore and my room ceased to exist. I wasn't from Spain because not just ANYONE could be from Spain, plus I had no relatives there and no house. My life was packed away neatly into two suitcases. When I first moved to Boston and I moved into my dorms people would ask me where I was from and I wouldn't know what to say. I hadn't planned on this happening. I was suddenly not from anywhere. I was born in Florida but that had been 20 years ago and my stint in Miami hardly qualified me as being a Floridian because I didn't even want to be there, let alone be from there.

The answer I settled with was that I'm from alot of places. But somehow that do me any justice whatsoever. I'm Latina but not from any specific country. I'm Cuban, but I've never been to Cuba. I'm American but only by citizenship. I don't feel American, I don't feel Cuban and most of the time I don't feel Latina because I don't feel like the rest of them. I didn't grow up in a typical latino household. That's probably it. I don't think I could ever BE from somewhere. I think I missed the window. I'm not a typical anything or anyone. I'm not even a typical non-typical person.

Can you even be a typical non-typical person?