One of the best lessons I learned in my life was in my 6th grade English class... and the lesson wasn't about grammar.

Let's set the scene here. You have a room filled with angsty and awkward 11-and-12-year-olds. This class is in the middle of the day and lunch happens right at the end of it - so not only are we all awkward cause we're going through puberty, but we're also super hungry, borderline hangry. As my teacher, a woman by the name of Ms. Battista, starts the class she begins to talk to us about a strange culture. Most everyone in the class doesn't really care, they're too busy wondering if Matt likes Monica as much as Monica likes Matt, but also Ryan likes Monica so there's some drama there. Mrs. Battista goes on to talk about this culture called "Nacirema."

The first impression of everyone in the class? To laugh at the name, it sounds like a weird name. Mrs. Battista goes on to tell us more about this culture. She tells us things like people in the culture, especially the women, punch holes into their ears to appear more beautiful. Everyone in the class thought that was pretty strange. Another thing was there was a shrine in the house, in fact some of the houses had multiple shrines. The people were very drawn to the shrine and would look at it every time they passed. Every morning, they would walk to the shrine, bow and begin a morning ritual. The people in this culture have a daily mouth ritual which, to perform the ritual, you'll need a small bundle of hog hairs and a type of powder. At this, most people in the class all scrunched up their faces at the idea of putting hog hairs in your mouth, that just sounded disgusting. In fact, Mrs. Battista went on to tell us that the Naciremas has a strange obsession with the mouths and their rituals for it. They believed if they did not conduct their ritual, their teeth would fall out, their friends would leave them, and their jaws would shrink. Again, this disgusted almost everyone in my class at picturing that happening to someone.

By this time, Mrs. Battista dropped the BIGGEST bomb on us. That someone in our classroom was too, a Nacirema. There was one girl who was absent that day, a girl named Lauren. Immediately, everyone began accusing it was Lauren even though we had no other proof except for that she was just the easy one to accuse behind her back.

That's when Mrs. Battista completely changed our lives by saying "actually, you're all Naciremas."

Immediately, everyone went on the defense.

"I'm not a Nacirema!"
"No! That culture is weird, that's not me!"
"No I'm not!"

That's when she took the story and began to twist it. She asked if we remember when she mentioned how she said people punched holes in their ears. Then she asked one simple question, "How many of you have pierced ears?" Almost everyone in the room raised their hands. Mrs. Battista went on to show them by piercing their ears, they had punched a hole in their ear to improve their beauty. A few of us fell silent as we began to realize what was going on.

She went on to talk about the shrine that everyone bowed to in the morning. "That's a mirror." She informed us, every morning every person "bows" at their mirror by bowing their head to spit the "powder," or also known as toothpaste out of their mouth, they had originally put on their "hog hairs," or also known as a toothbrush and the morning ritual the people took part in was brushing their teeth when they woke up so that their teeth wouldn't "fall out, their friends leave them, and their jaws would shrink," also known as your teeth rotting out.

From that moment on, I felt like my look on life had changed. A lot of people look at other cultures and think they're so weird, but how do you feel when you look at your own from a different viewpoint? Why are you judging a culture that you know nothing about, when someone could easily do that to yours? I wanted to share this because I felt it was relevant with all the political debates now about cultures outside of the normal American culture, things like the Dakota Access Pipeline, or the debate of allowing Muslims or Syrian refugees into our country.

Oh, and the Naciremas? Spell Nacirema backwards... American.