Minnesota Stoicism: Weather Wars

(this lifts heavily from my comments to Crazy Aunt Purl, who asked if Minnesotans love and discuss their regional cuisine in the tender yet obsessive manner that Southerners do)

Don't let Minnesotans fool you. We love our hot dishes, yes. Hot dishes are a regional specialty - the 'homier' (heavier) they are, the better we like 'em. When away from home we crave our lefse, and cheese curds, and whatever gawdawful thing we ate as kids. But it's NOT THE SAME as the way the Southerners love their regional foods.

We save that sort of intensity for our obsessive love/hate relationship with the weather. Temperature, humidity level, snowfall - we've got decades and decades of it stored up in our heads. Real Minnesotans remember snowstorms that occurred while they were still in the womb. I, personally, recall in micro-detail several weather occurances that were experienced by my grandmother in her youth, a century ago.

There is nothing more obnoxious than a Minnesotan in a weather pissing contest. You can't win. Relocated Minnesotans reminisce together over how deep the snow drifts were when they were kids, compare how close they've come to standing in the eye of a tornado, and count each other's fingers and toes. They pride themselves in an unbearably smug-yet-laconic manner on their unflappability in the face of the weather crises of their adopted states/countries.

"Oh, this bit of damp breeze is a *hurricane*? Huh. A bit inconvenient, I s'pose, but nothing to close the schools over..."

Our weather is *always* colder, hotter, more humid, more dry, more unreliable and more miserable than yours.

You can keep your Grits and your Pecan Pie. *I* ran out of candy during the Great Halloween Blizzard of '91...