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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

It was probably only my second or third time ever in Chicago - I was on this job interview and these two guys from this (now defunct) firm took me to lunch. They knew I was from Michigan because they had photocopies of my resume. "Michigan is full of survivalists!" this one guy told me. He said it like an accusation, like he thought I was a huge, inbred jerk for being from Michigan and he wanted me to know it.

I guess that “survivalism” has varied connotations, depending on who you talk to. And the term carries a lot of baggage. There are survivalists who are good people, and there are survivalists who are bad people, I am sure. All it takes to be a survivalist, however, is to merely believe that our society is on the verge of coming to a cataclysmic end and think that stockpiling equipment and skills designed to assist “survival” in the impending post-apocalyptic era is well-advised. It’s a lifestyle choice, really: living in a basement house and sleeping on two pallets of empty sandbags pushed together and slowly training your body to drink ever increasing amounts of your own urine without deleterious effect. It’s a hobby. Some people like white water rafting, other people like collecting stamps, others enjoying burying boxcar loads of ketchup in secret caches against a bleak future. And when some voracious bacteria consumes the world’s petroleum supply and society collapses, we'll see who's eating their tubers and wood grubs well seasoned with tomatoey goodness for the next fifty years (survivalists) and who's eating their tubers and wood grubs dry (asshole interviewers from now defunct law firms in Chicago) and getting scurvy.

So when this dude mentioned Michigan's survivalists, I was just like, "there’s some in Michigan, like many other states, what's your point?"

The interviewer saw that he had failed to raise my dander. He tried a different tact, an even more potent barb to prod the mental flesh of the Michigander. "I think that gun control is a good idea," he told me.

"You're entitled to your opinion." I responded, trying to stay in control, for like, five seconds. Then I lost it. "Guns!" I shouted. "Guns! GUNS GUNS GUNS!!"

Then I broke down into tears, and the other guy who took me to lunch, the one who realized that goading is not a successful interviewing or recruitment technique, rubbed my back while I sobbed into my napkin, which I had place on my lap at the beginning of the meal per the instructional video cassette titled "so you're a hillbilly and want to eat at a job interview,” that I had watched sitting in a plastic chair in the small career center library at my school in preparation for the interview.

A few months ago I was interviewing again. "I can tell you're from Michigan!" some dude told me.

"Oh yeah? How's that?" I asked with traditional Michigander wide-eyed naivete and trust.

“’Cause you're a stupid asshole!!" he told me.

Well, this last interviewer made an ass of HIMSELF. Times have changed. He doesn’t realize that being from Michigan is cool now.

I was just talking to a woman a few days ago, and in the process of polite conversation she bragged about her boyfriend. "He's from MICHIGAN!" She told me. "He's got the whole Michigan thing going on!”* The Midwestern worm has turned; Michigan is trending toward coolness. More and more people, even in Chicago, are down with us Michiganders. They are learning to appreciate our honest nose blowing into comically oversized handkerchiefs, our “smoked chubs,” and our many, many peninsulas.

* Through the course of our conversation, I was able to translate her idea of “the whole Michigan thing” as being the wearing of a beard and having a belly button that smells like sweet and sour sauce.