Remember This?

Okay, in case you doubted when I said it before (in this blog), you cannot doubt anymore.  It's a statistical FACT.  North Dakotans are nice.

During my 14-hour trip back to CO from ND, a few important things happened to me.  Not life-altering, but important.

• I had a lot of time to think.
• I was carrying 60 pounds of beef in my trunk.

The first one is obvious, right?  I mean, 14 hours, in a car, by myself, in the middle of nowhere.  What else is there to do, aside from lots of texting, phone calls to people one hasn't talked to in a long time, and jamming out to any radio station one can possibly find (because there aren't many out there).

I had a lot to think about.  As you probably read here, I had a lot going on over Christmas break, and was so torn over how to write blogs about my experiences that I even considered not writing the blog anymore at all.  I kept trying to come up with topics to write about and how to phrase them, but no matter what I thought, nothing sounded appropriate. 

Then, I had to stop near Fort Collins to drop off 30 pounds of beef to someone I'd never even met.

Now, you're all asking yourselves, "What in the world?  Why is 60 pounds of beef important?"  My first reply would be, "Well, everyone needs to eat to survive."  My second reply would be, "Because it allowed me to have a very interesting conversation with a man who, like me, values the niceties of North Dakotans.

The man who received half of the beef in my trunk is the nephew of my next-door neighbor.  He grew up in ND and stayed there until he was in his mid-20's.  We had a short discussion (over beef) concerning living in ND vs. CO, and swapped stories of nice North Dakotans and mean Coloradans.  I shouldn't say mean, but let's face it: they aren't as friendly as us North Dakotans.

The conversation was significant enough at the time that I planned on writing a whole blog strictly about it.  I didn't have time, and have lost a lot of the details since, so nothing came of it, obviously.  But that conversation was a topic I could finally find the words for, and it helped me to keep writing.

Then, nearly a week later, a Coloradan surprised me in the simplest manner.  He made my day, actually.  I was walking from my car to campus (I still park off-campus to save money), and passed a construction site.  As I passed this random construction man on the sidewalk, he said good morning.  I returned the greeting and haven't seen him since.

Anyway...  I tell you all that in order to get back to the point of the blog.  If you had doubts about my gross generalization about the character of North Dakotans before, you can't anymore, for this reason: On my way to school this morning, I was listening to a radio station that I don't typically listen to.  One of the female broadcasters had just come back from a cruise to Jamaica.  She said something with what is stereotypically called a "North Dakotan accent."  Her fellow broadcasters made fun of her incessantly for it, and they were making jokes about Fargo.  You know, the usual... 

Then, the lady said something like this, "Well, you know there is something else that makes the Jamaicans and North Dakotans similar."  Her coworkers said, "Oh, yeah?  What's that?"  She replied, "Well, they're just so darn friendly."

So there you have it, folks.  Undeniable proof that North Dakotans are friendly.  In case you didn't already know.

North Dakotans: Nice

Let's face it: It happens. 

You know what it is.

It happens to some more than others. 

When it comes to car batteries dying, it happens to me the most.  Or at least that's how it seems. 

I know exactly why it happens to me: I tend to be careless.  Not just in leaving my car lights on, but in life.  When I cook, one might think that a bomb has gone off in the kitchen.  When I paint, my clothes and hair get just as much paint on them as the thing I'm painting does.  I drop electronics in the toilet and put them through cycles in the washing machine.  I've locked my keys in my car so many times that I have a spare in my purse and one on the body of my car in case I lock my purse in my car, too (which has happened.  several times). 

I'd like to think that these things going wrong by my own fault is because I'm such a genius that I don't have time to consider those "little" things.  But 1) I'm not that conceited, and 2) I know it's just carelessness.

Thank goodness for kind North Dakotans who have come to my rescue in innumerable situations (I'm generalizing a bit, because usually these "kind" NoDak-ers are also my friends).  We are infamously nice people.  We come from the conservative Heartland of America, where people go to church every Sunday, everyone works hard, and we are all down-to-earth.

In October, when Jettie was here (read all about her visit here and here), we went to Denver for a day of sightseeing.  We had spent all day on our feet after an early morning and needed a nap, so we headed back to the parking garage to take a nap in my car.  We turned on the radio for some tunes and fell asleep.  Wouldn't you know... when we woke up, my battery was dead.  It was getting dark in the garage, and after some running around, we located a portable jumper thingy.  Just as the two of us and a (female) security guard were hooking the thing up, a car with a whole family pulled into the space next to mine.   Don't get me wrong, because we knew what we were doing, and we weren't struggling, but did any of those 5 or 6 people even ask if they could help in any way?  Did they leave their lights on so we could see better?  Did they even look our direction?  No.  They just walked away.

Things went just fine without their help; we had no problems.  But had this happened in ND, half the city of Gwinner would have come to help without even being asked.  It happens at the Medora Musical all the time: someone leaves their lights on, and an employee drives their personal car over to jump them.  It's not a big deal, and takes maybe 5 minutes of our time.

This summer, I jumped someone's car, and they offered to pay me.  OF COURSE I refused payment.  And I'm pretty positive that had I accepted the money, the man would have bitched about it the whole way home to Fargo.  It's general knowledge that it's polite to offer money with the knowledge that the one who has helped you won't accept payment.  It's just how it works.  We do it because we're nice, and because if we were in the same situation, we would expect a free jump.

Apparently, people around here don't get that.  That won't stop me from helping whenever I can.  In fact, I helped someone jump their car today.  Did I have to?  No.  I did it because I'm a nice person.  Did I get anything out of it?  Aside from this blog topic, no.  Is it even worth blogging about?  Maybe not.  But I did anyway.  Live with it.

Keep being nice, kids.  Keep being nice.