The Nebraska Phenomenon

Nov. 22, 2013, 1:12 pm. One of the Many Amazing Coffee Shops in Lincoln, Nebraska.

I was on a roll with the blog posts for a awhile there but alas, life got in the way again… Oh well, hopefully it gave you all (all of my faithful readers… all two of my faithful readers) time to catch up.

This week I should not be writing a blog post, I should be working on myriad papers, I’ll do that later I guess, and sleep when I die. In the mean time, I’m going to write a little something about living in Lincoln, Nebraska. I know I’ve mentioned this topic before in passing, but I thought I’d give it some real attention.

Whenever I told someone back in New York and Connecticut that I was moving to Nebraska I always got the same puzzled look, the chuckle and then the token question… “Why on earth would you want to move to Nebraska?” to which I would give the token answer, “I don’t really want to move to Nebraska, I want to go to graduate school…it’s a sort of means to an end.”

The funny thing is that no matter where you’re from, every non-native Nebraskan I meet seems to have a similar story, they came here as a sort of pit stop. It’s like when you’re on a road trip and you really have to pee, you have to pee so bad that you are willing to stop at that revolting gas station where a man behind the counter with no teeth will give you a gigantic key to a restroom that looks as if it was taken out of a scene from CSI and you wonder why they even bother to lock it. You go there because you really have to pee, and it’s not pretty but it gets the job done. I’m pretty sure that’s why people come to Nebraska. But it’s not why I’d like to stay.

This is the weird thing… I’m going to call it the Nebraska phenomenon, you gather all of these people who are willing to endure a little hardship to get where they think they want to go, people who are kind and generous because they know that life is strange and has a way of dragging you on what seems like a little bit of a wild goose chase and it’s not always easy – in fact life is really hard most of the time. We all seem to recognize this common goal of enduring life and as a result people start opening doors for each other, they invite you over for thanksgiving, they stop and let you into the correct lane on the road when you accidentally chose the wrong one, they ask you how your day is going when you buy milk at the grocery store, they drop what they’re doing and help you, sometimes without you even having to ask. To continue the earlier metaphor – it’s like pulling over when you really have to pee and instead of the disgusting gas station you find a tiny farm stand, with a nice lady behind the counter (ok, so maybe she doesn’t have teeth either) and she invites you into her home’s bathroom and offers you a seat and a cup of tea so you might rest a while, then she asks if you’d like to join her family for dinner and you do, because you’re tired and it’s been a long day of driving, and it’s the best chicken and potatoes you’ve ever had, and it’s a great story to boot. That’s why people stay; that’s why I’m loving it.

Will I stay in Nebraska forever? Probably not, but who knows? Life’s a long journey, were all fighting battles, we’ve all been driving all day and we all need a place to rest, to pee, Lincoln’s cozy for that. The funniest thing about the Nebraska phenomenon though is the fact that it really is a phenomenon; stay in Lincoln long enough and even a cynical east-coaster finds herself, opening a door or two, letting someone into her lane, even asking a stranger how their day is going.