Where I Come From

For the first 19 years of my life, I lived in Orange County, California.  Born in Anaheim, my parents raised me in Placentia, a small town of 50,000 just ten minutes (as long as traffic is on your side) from Disneyland.  Still don't know where I'm talking about? Don't worry, I'm not offended, there are plenty of people from California who don't even know Placentia exists.  My little town was just that- a little town that just happened to be in the center of Orange County.  We've had a few people from there make it big, such as Olympians Janet Evans and Julie Swail, Director James Cameron, and even Audrina Patridge from The Hills, but for the most part Placentia just blends in with the rest of Orange County.

For the life of me, I can't quite understand people's fascination with "The OC".  I'm sorry, I'll correct you now, it is not THE OC just like it is not THE San Diego or THE Hollywood... it's just "OC" if you must shorten it, but please don't.   At some point, people began to become fascinated with the region I called home for so many years.  

While I was in High School, MTV decided it'd be a great idea to see what high schoolers in Orange County are like, and so the show Laguna Beach was born.  While I'll admit, there are plenty of well-off families in Orange County (mostly concentrated by the beach, but definitely seen in pockets throughout the rest of the county that include Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda, and Irvine) the lives documented on this "reality show" were far from documenting the lives of your average Orange County high schooler.  In fact, more often than not, shows like Laguna Beach left the more average people I knew wondering, "this is what life here is supposed to be like?"  Nearly the same message was reinforced via Fox's The OC (I hate Fox for birthing that horrible moniker), not only did the show highlight the well-to-do, affluent Orange County image, but The OC also helped create a huge animosity towards the Inland Empire (or "The 909" or "The 951" as I've heard it referenced) that I personally had never noticed before.  I'm not even going to get into the "Real" Housewives of Orange County... 

Two major things amuse me about the media which has surrounded Orange County for the last decade or so: first, whenever someone finds out I was born (and raised) there, they automatically snap to judgement about me, assuming I'm rich and spoiled (neither are the case), or, they ask me what it was like to live there as though they're going to hear stories that rival an episode of Laguna Beach (thankfully, the latter has subsided over the past couple of years as the show hasn't been aired as much).  Secondly, the astronomical amount of people who chose to live outside of their means in order to portray that well-off OC lifestyle, and the amount of people who declared bankruptcy or had their home fall into foreclosure as a result.  While the financial pig-sty that has been left for my friends who still reside in Orange County is not a pretty picture, I wonder how much of it could have been averted had people not placed such value on upholding such an unrealistic value-system?

Don't get me wrong, I still miss Orange County, as it houses some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen and most of my dearest friends and family still live there.  But would I want to live there again if it meant getting caught up in the rat-race that seems to envelope it? Not on your life...