We've all had unusual childhoods, but unusual in different ways.

My takeaway from childhood was that I was an outsider. I called it "playing Secret Agent", I was always a stranger in a strange land, surrounded by another tribe. They weren't necessarily hostile (at least not all the time) and I understood their customs and language well enough so I could blend in, go unnoticed. But I was still never one of them. For their part, they never seemed to understand what a different culture was. They really believed everyone else was just like them, and shocked when they learned we weren't. They were like the proverbial fish who are incapable of conceptualizing water because they swim in it all the time. They cannot imagine its absence any more than they can sense its presence.

I was raised in a Spanish-speaking household in an immigrant community, so I very quickly exposed to the idea of "culture"--long before I learned there was a word for it. I quickly learned the ways of the mainstream culture at school and from my childhood friends. I also developed an early love of science fiction, which I read voraciously. Science fiction was all about other cultures, alien civilizations and time travelers from distant futures. They may have been just trashy pulp fiction, penny dreadfuls, but they were as much a part of my social education as they were the origins of my scientific interests. I became comfortable with the idea of other cultures. I learned early on that the "others" might be different, maybe even evil, but they were certainly legitimate. They were not strange, just different. And I also realized they themselves did not realize how others were different from them. And if you don't realize that, you can never realize how much all of us have in common too. I could also see that same inability to fully understand the Other was also shared by my parents and their community. I soon became a secret agent in my own home. I learned early on the superstitions of my tribe were not the laws of physics. And I had to hide this knowledge from my own family. They simply would not understand. And as their own nineteenth century Havana way of life and thought was gradually absorbed into twentieth century America I watched them become rootless, rudderless, eyeless in Gaza.

Around age 12 we moved out of the city into the country, a distant rural suburb of Tampa called Brandon, now just a bedroom community of the city. Here was another culture altogether, the Crackers, the original rural population of the State, before immigrants from the Yankee North and from Cuba, Spain and Italy flooded in. "Crackers", was never an insulting term, it was simply the accepted word for a native-born Floridian, what they called themselves. So technically, I was a Cracker too, by birth. But I would never be fully accepted by the Crackers, even those who were my friends and knew me well. They always saw me as an outsider, and I always felt the Secret Agent.

In the military I was thrust into yet another culture, one which almost everyone of my generation was exposed to. Not only was I in the service with representatives of every social, ethnic and economic class, but I was on a ship, with the trappings, customs and speech of an ancient tradition; the life rhythms and personal relations which trace back to the gun decks of Nelson's frigates.

After I returned to civilian life, I was thrust into yet another tribe, I spent much time in the heart of the counter-culture. I never fully accepted all the hippy-dippy trappings of the Sixties, I lived on the fringes of it without ever fully committing to it. But there was much there I admired, and I must confess it affected me profoundly and still stays with me. I may not let my freak flag fly, but I always keep it reverently folded next to my heart.

After came brief exposures to still other cultures. I worked blue collar jobs, I lived overseas, I spent time in corporate America, in town and country, and even as a Silicon Valley engineer. I have always prided myself in my ability to adapt and exploit the virtues of other cultures, as well as avoid their pitfalls. I was a very good Secret Agent, and I worked well on my own. They'd given me a number and taken away my name. It seemed to be what I was trained for.

So here I find myself, rapidly approaching the Biblical three-score-and-ten, a Cuban-Cracker-sailor-astronomer-hippy-geographer. And for the first time in my life I feel I can no longer rely on my Secret Agent skills. I feel like an exile in my own country, a stranger in a strange land, someone losing touch with the culture around him, and finding it harder and harder, every day, to feel at home in it. Is it just me, or does this happen to everybody sooner or later? Then again, maybe its just the times we live in. Perhaps no amount of training or experience can prepare you for a society changing as rapidly and chaotically as this one.

Or maybe I've just blown my cover.