North Dakota: An Anthropological Study of Snow, Dirt, and Guppers.

I was going to write a blog about my newest obsession that takes up all the free-time on my weekends, but I am not sure if you are all ready for the fantastic mayhem that is hashing, so instead, today's blog is dedicated to the peculiar "planet" of North Dakota and the few brave souls who have left this alien nation in order to bestow their race's cultural gifts upon the rest of us.

Growing up in California and having been traveling internationally since I was 16 years old, I was falsely under the impression that I was worldly and that my willing, and more often unwilling, exposure to the more liberal aspects of life had left me without much to be intrigued about in my own country--especially any of those pointless and dull states in the middle of the country, that I never bothered learning the names of or where they were in proximity to anything other than New York or California. Some may call it ignorance, I believed it was being ethnocentric-ally enlightened......that was until I met my very first North Dakotan* here in Okinawa.

When one meets new people, it is customary to learn a bit about where they are from and what they do there. That is just called being polite, even if you really do not care. When I initially met someone from North Dakota my first reaction was just to laugh. If I had ever cared to have even thought of North Dakota before the moment of meeting someone from there I would have thought the following....no one actually lives there. It is just a place to film movies like Fargo and a place to kill Native Americans and Buffalo**. It is a place where people put a hole in the ice and sit there all day long waiting for a fish instead of just going to Whole Foods and buying a really good fish like God intended. It is a place where life is so dull and everyone has so much time to be bored that they all have learned to talk slower and incomprehensible in order to make time go by, so that the week goes by more quickly in order for them to put another hole in the ice and wait all day to catch a fish.

(The above, by the way, is all factual and true of North Dakota). However there is so much more to North Dakotans--Magical pastimes and stories that make me think that perhaps I might need to move there and for once in my life be normal.....

Youth Activities

When asked what a typical pastime was for children growing up in North Dakota, I was given two answers-- the first was the summer explanation and the second was the winter explanation.

1) In the summer, children living in North Dakota find huge piles of packed dirt. I do not remember where the dirt comes from, but it is just there--mountains of dirt. The children then dig in it, making tunnels and forts. This consumes their entire summer.

2) In the winter, children living in North Dakota find huge piles of packed snow. It snows in North Dakota from like October to May or something like that, so this is the main activity for children from the time they are born until they go work for a snow plow or dirt mound building company. The snow piles come from where the snow plows leave them. The children then dig in it, making tunnels and forts. This consumes their entire winter.

I do not think there is a fall or spring in North Dakota. There is only just snow and dirt.

Education

In North Dakota, spelling of the English language is not valued in school. This is because in North Dakota they do not speak English. Never try to play scrabble with someone from North Dakota because not only do they cheat by taking as many tiles as they want but they also use all of the O's. Do not test this theory because it really sucks.

Economy

There is no economy in North Dakota.

Religion

In North Dakota every one is devoutly Christian. This is because they want to go to heaven in order to leave North Dakota. Everyone in North Dakota is named after a biblical character except for names like Noah, Judas, Ezra etc. In North Dakota there are no Jews or bagels.

Family Values and Traditions

The people of North Dakota have no idea where they come from. It is a mix of being Native American, Norwegian, Russian, and from Iceland. Everyone else died by natural selection because they could not survive the cold or they decided to move someplace else. Because of these cultural influences, people from North Dakota eat Lefse. It is like if a potato pancake and flat-bread had a baby in your mouth. Please do not get this confused with a latke, because as you learned in the Religion section of this blog, there are no Jews in North Dakota.

Additionally, children are raised to form emotional connections to inanimate objects in North Dakota. In fact, some children fall in love with vacuum cleaners. In my research, I was informed of a certain child who loved vacuum cleaners so much that he referred to them as "guppers" and on family vacations to the hardware store, this child would make his way to the "gupper" aisle where he spent priceless quality time with his dirt sucking friends until he reached adulthood. This specific child who is now in his twenties is still known as "Gupper" to his family. Later in life, he found electric fans. The vacuum cleaners are still scorned and resent him for his infidelity.

After learning so much about the cultural treasures of North Dakota, I almost feel sorry for myself having to grow up in California without snowplow drag-races, elongated vowels, and a love for guppers. Who would have thought I would have had to move to Japan to really appreciate the gems of my own nation and wonder if life could have been just a bit better if I could have grown up in a place like that--don't cha know?

* I hope that no North Dakotans were harmed or insulted by the writing of this blog.

**Please note that it has been told to me that Buffalo are in fact exstinct and what we eat are actually Bison.