30 More Days before I leave for Wisconsin and "The Lake"

I grew up in Minnesota. I always wondered by I carried certain attitudes and perceptions around with me. After reading How To Talk Minnesotan...A Visitor's Guide By Howard Mohr, I have a better understanding of myself. Lesson 2 in Howard's book is The Power of The Negative. So that's why I'm always running around knocking on wood and looking around for the next disaster to fall. See? Minnesota.

A WORD ABOUT EMOTIONAL OUTBURSTS

~ "Oh, great, just wonderful, terrific. I love it!!!!"

Get that excited about something in Minnesota and you might as well paste a bumper sticker on your forehead that says I'M NOT FROM AROUND HERE. I don't know what you were taught where you came from, but you shouldn't let your positive feelings run amuck while you're here. It's okay to have good feelings but there's no sense running down the street telling people about it at the top of your voice. There's a good chance it won't last, anyway. Good things happen--yes--but when they do, Minnesotans are a little nervous because they know something bad will eventually happen to balance it out. But if something bad happens they know they're safe for a while from something else bad, probably, but you never know.

(I believe that I've expressed this opinion/truth in one of my past blogs....I know I passed it along to my children.)

Minnesotans prefer to express their positive feelings through the use of negatives, because it naturally levels things out.

If somebody asks "How's it goin'?" and you're feeling mainly average and life in general is okay at the moment--not perfect, of course--you'll say

~ "Not so bad."

On the other hand, if you're feeling better than average and you haven't noticed any ill winds, you'll say

~ "Can't complain."

Can't complain actually means you could complain if pressed, because there's always something, that's just the way it is. But you're saying that since you feel so good (within reason) for the moment--with no illusions that it's permanent or anything--you're going to pass on the complaining for now, but you'll catch up on it later.

If you reply

~"It could be worse."

you could be saying exactly what you mean, because of course things can always be worse than they are. In fact, things can be worse than they are more often than they can be better than they are; it's a fact of life. If it's not going real well--say the pipes busted in the basement while you were in town seeing the sheriff about your stolen car--you say "It could be worse." because you know very well that if you start thinking this is the end of it, the water heater's gonna short out or your daughter's gonna need braces.

(I think that this attitude explains a lot about how I react to various disasters that have come my way. Yup! "It could be worse.", but I pray for, "Can't complain.", but will settle for, "Not too bad." or "Not so bad.")

Howard continues with this last note which finishes up Lesson 2 of How to Talk Minnesotan:

Not too good and not so good are worse than not too bad and not so bad. Way worse, in fact. When somebody asks you how you slept on the guest bed with the bar that cuts across your back and gives you shooting pains down your legs, you will say "Not too bad" because you don't want to hurt their feelings, but how you actually slept was not too good.