Sometimes in order to tell a story, you have to go back to the beginning. Not that beginning, though. The beginning before the beginning.
All of that is to say, North Dakotans are weird. That's where it starts.
The advantage to living a nomadic existence is that you get a feel for the quirks of people in different places. For example, find me a resident of Houston who eats at home all of the time. Look out, thought! It's a trap! Houston people don't eat at home, silly. They eat out! A lot!
Wander to Buffalo and comment that you smell cereal. I guarantee more than one person will look at you and proudly grin as they say, "Isnt' it great?"
Then there are Pittsburghers and their parking chairs and even though I have -- as of nearly this very moment -- lived in Pittsburgh longer than I have lived anywhere else in my life, I still don't fully understand the parking chair. I mean, I get it. I just don't GET it. It's a quirk. It's a thing Pittsburghers GET and understand and own.
North Dakotans have quirks, miles and miles and miles of quirks, but chief among them is their penchant for saying everything and nothing at once. Are you one of those people who turn up the iPod as loud as possible while shoving your nose in a book while on a plane? Then don't go to North Dakota. You won't survive the plane ride to Bismarck or Minot or Williston or wherever because Aunt Beulah will murder you with words. She will ask you about that book and you'll give a simple two word answer. Next thing you know, you'll be listening to Aunt Beulah's neighbor's sister's life story. Don't worry, Lottie's story is an interesting one. Sort of.
OK, not really. It won't matter, though, because you're dead from ALL OF THE TALKING.
Ask a close-ended question, get the life story of some person whose name you can't remember because it was mentioned before ALL OF THE WORDS.
Ask for directions (turn left at the tree!) and forget where you were headed because OMG THEY NEVER STOP TALKING.
While North Dakotans feel the need to pour words and words and words into the silence, there is a thing they do that is almost magical. They never say anything. They dance around neighborhood, but they never actually cross the street.
Exhibit A: Read this blog all the way through. Seven years of posts, but I've never really said anything. It's true. It's one of the ways you know there is North Dakotan blood screaming through my veins.
That blood came from my mother's side of the family. The lot of them were Norwegian immigrants who found the cold and silence and vast nothingness of the prairie appealing enough to settle down and build a farm. When the first farmhouse no longer served the purpose, they built another less than a mile away. Both farmhouses existed in the midst of miles and miles and miles of fields filled with wheat, soybeans, and sunflowers.
When Paul Harvey talked about the farmers, he was talking about my grandfather.
Grandpa Lew was the man who took a bean seed and placed it in a plastic box with a wet tissue so that I could learn about germination. He was the man who taught me to lean just right when wrecklessly driving a three wheeler through the gravel pits. He was the man who taught me about horseshoes and bowling. Grandpa Lew convinced me that real men drive Chevy trucks and have a collection of baseball caps miles long. He taught me that smart men tie one end of a rope to the porch rail and the other around their waist before navigating a snow storm on foot. He taught me what trash to burn and what trash to bury.
There were words and words and words and words.
But he never actually said anything.
Which is exactly how it doesn't surprise me at all that he never once mentioned that he paid for a life insurance policy and named me a benefactor.
I think.
I don't actually know because, like I said, North Dakotans say a lot of words, but they don't actually say anything.