Minnesota Nice?

[sweetpetey]

This weekend was Twin Cities Pride. It was hot sunny and for those of us not adapted for the heat, miserable. Sunburn and dehydration happened to me. Watched the parade drank some beers, OK, a lot of beers, flirted with lots of very cute guys, spent the whole weekend with the man of my dreams. But this isn’t what I want to rant about today

Comments

[harfang]

Part of the very nature of Minnesota Nice is that it does not brook unpleasantness. Its adherents cannot cope with things that are not ordinary, workaday, and/or comfortable. The "nice" means cordial, nonconfrontational, hospitable under very particular circumstances, not uncouth, polite. When someone is struggling to get up out of the street, a person who is fully immersed in Minnesota Nice will "instinctively" perceive the situation first and foremost as being uncouth and unpleasant. Not only that, but doing something about it would require confronting the unpleasantness.

I once stopped a bus driver who had just let a bunch of U students on and then pulled away as a nice little older lady -- not super old, maybe 70 and obviously very self-sufficient, but with a polite and quiet manner that probably made her less noticeable to the driver -- was stepping up to enter the bus. (I was not catching the bus myself.) I ran about a block down Washington, banging on the side of it when I could reach it with my hand. Fortunately the lady was pretty spry, because she had to jog up to the bus after I stopped it. She did thank me, which is irrelevant because I just did it without thinking; it never would have occurred to me not to. The automatic response made it one of those times when I have evidence that my parents done brung me up right, tyvm.

What really stands out for me is that the driver, a female WASP of about 35 or 40 years, looked at me like I had three heads and a spatula for a body. She couldn't believe I'd done that. She looked somewhat offended. For fuck's sake. What, is making some amount of noise gonna unleash wild dogs on us all or something? Are we hiding in a bunker, desperate to escape notice? To me, Minnesota-Nice people are a lot like urban wild bunnies: they startle easily, and they seem to presume that predators encroach upon them at all times.