Except I’m really not a hillbilly. But I am a Yooper, which isn’t all that different in terms of stereotypes and that’s what this post is about. If I can pull it off and I probably can’t because it’s Friday night, the 13th no less, so I am brain-dead. But I’m gonna plummet along into it anyway.

I get the double-whammy when it comes to stereotypes. I grew up in Michigan’s upper peninsula. It is an absolutely gorgeous area with Lake Superior to the north and Lake Michigan to the south. It is not often very warm up there and it is a long way from any kind of megalopolis. And when you live on the Planet Ann Arbor, no matter how many years you have lived on the Planet Ann Arbor, if you volunteer the information that you came from the Yoop, folks get this crazy idea that you are illiterate and ride snowmobiles everywhere and shoot guns, etc. And it’s true that guns are shot, but..

On the flip side of the coin… If you tell folks from Michigan’s upper peninsula that you live on the Planet Ann Arbor, the look and unintelligible response that they give you makes you wonder if they think you are growing marijuana in your blasted backyard. I dunno. Maybe some folks are. I’m sure they probably are. I’ll almost bet there are more folks in the UP who are growing pot in their back yards. Me? NOTHING grows in my dern backyard. Including regular lawn-type grass in the last couple years. We have this awful clay stuff here and I have a blasted black thumb. So. Not growing (or smoking) pot here.

This stereotyping stuff is ridiculous. Yes, I grew up in the Yoop. And I’ve lived many more years on the Planet Ann Arbor than I have in the Yoop. But, since we still have family property in the Yoop (and *love* it there), I go there frequently. I love it down here too. I loved visiting my cousins here when I was a kid. I wanted to live here when I grew up and somehow, I ended up doing that. So now I am boomerang woman.

All of us, all of us. Our ancestors have come from all over the earth and we all have different and very complex family histories. Let’s all find out about our history and use our knowledge to try to make the world a better place instead of pigeon-holing everybody into these ridiculous stereotypes.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.