Most of my childhood was spent growing up in Germany. My father and I lived off base on the German economy so most of my friends were German. Warm weather afternoons were spent at a local beer garden on the edge of a forest I considered my playground. On one particular Saturday afternoon, I was introduced to an elderly gentleman my friends called Opah Kross (Grandpa Kross). I’m being polite. The introduction was more of a warning and he didn’t behave like much of a gentleman. “Dies ist der Amerikaner?” I heard behind me as I talked to my would-be girlfriend. I turned around, long since used to being either an outcast or a novelty in my neighborhood. I’d been asked after as the “Amerikaner” so often there didn’t seem anything odd in it happening again, “Psst, Davit, nein!” my friend, Iris, tried to warn me. I ignored her.
I found myself face to chin with a tall, white-haired man wielding a cane in one hand and a smoldering pipe in the other. He’d penetrated uncomfortably far into my personal space and I resisted the urge to take a step back. Trying on my most disarming smile, I greeted the man with “Grüße Gott! Sie sind Herr Kross, Ja?” Loosely translated, I told him Greet God, you are Mr. Kross, correct? Greet God may sound odd, but it was a common salutation in that part of Germany. I’d seen him around before. The question was just a courtesy.
Kross stepped back a bit and narrowed his eyes. He addressed my friend over my shoulder, “He’s no American,” he challenged her, “his German is too good.” I don’t know why I took offense at that or why I elected to continue ignoring Iris who, at this point, was tugging at the back of my shirt and trying to get me away, but for some reason I decided to stand up for my heritage despite no real offense having been given. I spoke German fluently, having learned both languages at the same time, but I was intent on proving him wrong. Things took a bad turn from there.
In a mix of fluent English and German, I assured him I was American, thank you very much, and would be more than happy to prove it in anyway he saw fit. The old man’s eyes shifted from the girl behind me and settled squarely on me. I met his gaze and refused to look away. In the brief quiet that settled over the moment, I could sense something building, like a rubber band being pulled taut. His head started to move in a slow nod and then finally he spoke. “Ja. Du bist Amerikaner. Arrogant.” And with that, he jabbed his lit pipe straight at my face.
Kross was old, I was young and we had reflexes to match our years. I easily sprung back, dodging the approaching ember and knocked Iris aside. What my reflexes didn’t account for was the low-walled fire pit we’d been chatting by and I stumbled butt first into it. Thankfully it was cold, unlit for at least a day or two, but as a cloud of ash and soot billowed around me, I wasn’t counting my blessings. I was longing to do nothing more than to extricate myself, grab the man’s cane and beat him to within an inch of his life. Iris never gave me the chance.
It was doubtless for the best that she tackled me as I leapt from the concrete pit, spitting ash and curses. My other friends came charging from the stand where they’d been buying candy and helped her drag me away from the maniacally laughing old man who didn’t seem the least bit concerned about what I might do should I break free. His indifference was probably justified. I wasn’t more than 11 or 12, but I hate to think how much damage one or the other of us would have done before the event came to an end were it not for my friends hauling me off. Once safely away, I yanked my arms free of them and stormed home, humiliated, outraged, but mostly hurt and poignantly aware of how tenuously I belonged. I felt as much German as American most of the time. Kross had just reminded me I was a guest; a guest not much welcome in the eyes of some.
This story has a happy ending. Long as it is already, I’ll cliff-note things now and say that another run in with Kross months later resulted in his sharing a beer with me (don’t panic, it’s culturally acceptable for an adult to share a beer with a minor in Germany). That meeting set the tone for a truce that later evolved into a friendship and I learned that Herr Kross had been a Nazi panzer crewman towards the end of the war. It was a time when Germany had lost any semblance of being the aggressor. When young men were put into service to defend their country rather than follow some madman’s dream of world domination. He’d seen friends die horrific deaths at the hands of my ilk. And when it was all over, there weren’t any medals. There weren’t any parades. There was just bitter defeat and a low-boil shame that prevented him, in most company, from even mentioning that he’d fought in uniform.
I spent much of my life in Europe feeling like an outcast. I didn’t live on base, so I didn’t get to form close bonds with other American kids. On the other side of the coin, even though I spoke the German language as well as any German, there was something just alien enough about me that most Germans knew I wasn’t one of them or they soon learned it from others. But the oddest thing happened as a result of that run-in with Opah Kross. I learned that you don’t have to be foreign to not fit in. As bad as I had it, here was a man who felt like an outcast in his own land. And from that mutual recognition over several months and several cold, shared beers, we came to give a damn about one another. Separated by age, culture and nationality, we found one thing in common and formed a bond around it.
It’s so easy to form impressions about people from the barest surface data. He’s foreign. He’s old. He’s fat. He’s ugly. He isn’t very smart. We find something about somebody and draw wild conclusions based on just a single attribute. Behind each and every one of us, though, there’s a massive tome of history; a rich tapestry of color. If you allow preconceived ideas to mix with perceived conditions, you almost assure yourself of missing out on what could be the next great Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mona Lisa or Sistine Chapel. Instead, leave your expectations at the door and invest the time to look beyond the cover of the book or the primary colors of a painting and see what an amazing story might unfold with just a deeper look. Who knows… you might make a friend… and that friend just might be willing to share his beer.
