The Day I Felt Like Harry Potter, with the Wrong Last Name

In a small town, a last name can buy you good graces. It can get you invited to dinner, to community events, to meet the family, and maybe even grant you exclusive access to a secret family recipe. On the other hand, it can also bring shifty glances, cold shoulders, and guarded conversation.

There is only one place in the world where I resent my last name. It’s called Roseau, Minnesota, a town of 2,500 people and thirteen churches. It’s about twenty minutes from the Canadian border and contains several dear members of my family. It’s where my mother grew up and where I used to visit my grandparents annually for the Roseau County Fair. Oof-da Tacos! Drag Competitions! (where they load pack horses with lumber, not gay men with heels) Demolition Derby!

It was heaven.

It’s still a wonderful place. I love visiting my family up there, and I’m sure at least half of that comes from the look my grandma gives me when I visit her.

And my grandparents are where all the trouble comes from. Only in Roseau, MN would you yearn for the last name “Johnson.” Mundane. Ordinary. Common. But in a small town in northern Minnesota, it’s a ticket to the hearts of residents. On the other hand, introducing myself as “Ainsley Schoff” causes curt nods and clipped conversation, right up until my grandmother associates us.

After I’m introduced as my mother’s daughter, their eyes brighten up and they crack a grin, and proceed to ask me all about her. Sweet acceptance! It feels like an invitation to a warm fire when you’re sitting out in the cold (a surprisingly frequent condition in northern Minnesota).

Inevitably these people search my face and proceed to say, “You look just like your mother! Except for your eyes…”

I would smile and nod, and wait for the understanding that I must have my father’s eyes; why yes, that would explain it all.

But it doesn’t happen.

This continued to happen throughout my trip to Roseau. They would all relate me to my mother, then mention my eyes, and continue to squint befuddled at me, as if to say “Where in the world did those come from? So odd…”

This is when I realized that though I aspire to be him, my relation to Harry Potter had dwindled. While he was surrounded by people who knew his last name as if it were their own, and people would often comment, “You look just like your father, except for your eyes. You have Lily’s eyes,” I was in a land where nobody knew my name, and would barely associate with me until it was discovered whose daughter I was.

And those damn eyes. Where did they come from?

Small town America, you’re as dear to me as you are a foreign land.