We're pretty happy over here in flyover country.
We Midwesterners have lots of farms, food, lakes, family, churches, baseball, forests, guns, and everything else that makes life worth living. Outside of the weirdos in big cities like Chicago and Detroit, we're pretty laid back too.
But we do have some oddities of our own that this amazing Twitter account has dedicated to explaining through memes.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
"Ope" is how you immediately tell if someone is from the Midwest.
If you aren't familiar with this sacred word, it's an exclamation we use whenever we are surprised, happy, angry, scared, or confused about anything, especially when we're trying to convey apologies or regret.
Example: "Ope! I'm just gonna sneak right past ya and grab the ranch!"
But that's not all.
I showed this to my wife because I'm as guilty as heck.
We recently got a used SUV for our growing family and I swear no matter how hard I try, I always downplay how excited I am about having a larger vehicle and I always overplay how good of a discount I got on it.
I don't know how to explain it. It's like you want people to 1) know how frugal and thrifty you are while 2) not wanting to appear proud and 3) trying to keep any ne'er-do-wells from thinking you have valuables lying around.
I might need to ponder this phenomenon over a cold glass of Vernor's and a Culver's burger.
But I'll need to survive pothole season first!
The potholes around here are no joke. Not only do our roads expand and contract with the frigid temperatures, cracking that concrete up like a jackhammer, but the states that use salt exacerbate the problem by causing constant thawing and refreezing.
There's nothing like surviving the winter but losing a tire on that monster pothole on the next street over.
Speaking of seasons:
This is 100% TRUE:
As soon as it's above 40º, we roll down our windows, take off our coats, and don the customary Midwest spring garb of a hoodie with shorts and boots. This is the way.
(My children asked to roll the window down on the way home from school the other day and I was so dang proud.)
We Midwesterners also take pride in pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. There is honor in taking care of your own affairs, so when someone asks for help, even when it's 100% smart and normal for them to do so, we still play it off like it's no big deal.
So true!
😭 😭 😭
This next one is hard to explain:
I dunno about the whole socks thing, but nearly no one uses the front door of a home unless they are strangers and don't know the layout of said home.
Midwesterners usually use the side or garage door. That's just how it's done. There's too much mud and water to be tracking across the living room. Plus, you don't want to be making some kind of grand entrance. Only weirdos do that.
We also have odd ways of measuring distance. It's all based on how long it takes to drive somewhere. I never tell someone, "Oh, that's about 30 miles away." I say, "It's about 20 minutes down the road," which means it's actually one city over but not that far of a drive.
Sometimes this can get confusing, so here's a guide:
Despite measuring time and distance with our cars, however, not everyone is a good driver:
I don't know exactly what happens in these situations, but it always happens when you're late to something and you're on the highway. Someone will start passing in the left lane, but then they don't finish passing. They just sit there, running parallel to the other guy in the right lane so no one can pass, creating a log jam for miles behind them.
I'm not sure if this is 1) some kind of Midwestern herd mentality that unconsciously takes over, or 2) some deep-seated desire to be polite that causes the driver in the left lane to slow down, or if 3) driving next to someone just feels so nice that they want to linger.
Maybe it has something to do with our extreme distaste for goodbyes!
Anyway, we haven't touched on our famous culinary concoctions, so this might be the time:
SO DANG GOOD! It's like my childhood in pictures.
It's also important to understand that we're not all the same. We actually rather dislike the other states around us.
