After having a wonderful conversation with our new neighborhood friends, the reason why I'm having a difficult time getting used to Northern Wisconsin is that FUN is not of value to the majority of people here. Serious, hardy, no-nonsense, etc. is of utmost value.
Fun made up most of my life in California, I worked with kids, thought up fun things to do all the time. I thought that fun was my job in life.
Appleton, Wisconsin is a very fine city, with very fine people, who work hard, volunteer, hunt, ice-fish (why? I don't know), and unless they are all liquored up you can barely get some of them to smile. Even the children are a little serious. I'm determined to not have the fun sucked out of me. It is challenging to find fun here in the winter 'cause you have to make your own fun, but I am determined to find it.
Maybe since we are new here we don't know how to have fun, it's a different kind of fun, we probably don't laugh at the same jokes, or socialize the same way. I'm beginning to get a clearer and clearer picture of the social clash in Iraq, two completely differnt tribes. You know what they say, if you are having a problem, you probably need to point that finger right at yourself. SO, I'm going to try harder!
If you want to see the great things about WISCONSIN go to:
www.cheeseheaduniversity.com
Please prove me wrong, Anyone want to have fun??
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6 comments:
warning: none of these activities are fun and you should not consider doing any of them:
http://www.wild-air.com/
http://www.kidmuseum.org/
http://www.bubolzpreserve.org/
http://www.thehouseontherock.com/
http://www.nationalrrmuseum.org/
http://www.appleton.org/departments/recreation/
http://www.dells.com/
http://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.asp?trailid=HGM074-038
Cathy
Appleton and cheese. Sounds like a good combo to me. My dad alays used to put cheddar on his apple pie! Cathy you are a grscious and wonderful person. One day, we will meet. God Bless you
hehehehe... we sooo get both views of what you're talking about. Teresa grew up in Minneapolis, and I think I told you I lived for several years over the state line in Rockford, IL, driving up to see my brother's family in Green Bay.
We think your perceptions of the pecking order of midwestern values and the resulting ranking of "fun" are accurate... you cracked us up. As a new arrival from New England back then, it took me some time to adjust, but I came to appreciate, value and love so many things about that part of this wonderful country, and I had loads of fun there!
As a 100% born and raised in WI native I am in total agreement regarding the lack of fun in people around here. Heck, we have tons of "fun things to do", but we lack any public approval for just being silly and having FUN.
As a I youth I longged to fit in better since most people just did not understand my sense of humor nor my creativity. Now I am 38 years old and still very few people "get me" but now I take pride in not fitting in since I don't want to be practical all the time and walk around with a stick up my a**.
When I came back to WI after 5 years as a nanny (living in 3 different state) to settle down and get married the lack of fun-ness was so apparent that I ended up saying to hell with a normal wedding day and instead choose to get married in private. When I would daydream with people about fun color combinations, unorthodox ideas, or just the idea about what to do to make the wedding fun for people, I would get the "no-fun","practical perspective" and "fear of standing out" speech. It went something like this.
ME: I sometimes daydream what it would be like to have a violinist wandering about during the dinner and playing at people's tables?
THEM: Are you sure you want to bug people like that at dinner? What if somebody says something to you? It sounds like it would cost alot and I would never waste money paying someone to just wander around and play a violin. People might think they have to give him a tip or something and get mad.
Like I said, most people don't "get me." But that is all the more reason to try and liberate them from the WI box of practical thinking. Someone has to help the poor devils and since they already have me in the box marked "odd" if not down right "insufferable" I may as well make the most of it and try to convert a few before the last of my kind get killed off by practicality.
-J.Stratton
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Cathy,
It's pretty risky to say "the fun sucked out of me." (I dare you to say it five times as fast as you can.)
But you are a risk-taker and that is why you create fun (and hysteria) wherever you are.
Besides, the statement you could potentially make by getting your merds wixed up would probably also be true of your move from California to Wisconsin.
chuck
good to see you are still alive AND are still funny.
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