The Barren State and a Beautiful Woman

Nostalgia can be incredibly irrational- it makes us long for things that we used to enjoy; things that at one point might have been fun or we enjoyed doing with people we cherish.

But that's where nostalgia needs to stop. The worst thing you can do about a bout of nostalgia is to look at it like a small, unsuspecting child looks at a hornet's nest and think, "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I tried to experience THAT." (Hopefully not again, though.) Stirring up nostalgia is akin to chucking dynamite into a perfectly good lake with still waters and living fish- it only looked nice because you weren't a big enough dolt to mess it up in the first place.

"Needs more dynamite"

   There are two main kinds of nostalgia, at least for the sake of this post, and I'll look at short-term nostalgia:  longing for a recent experience or place. Over Christmas break, as I rested in the comforting bosom of New Jersey with all its accompanying wonders, I began to long after Ohio.

Now let me give myself some space here- Ohio's not much of a state to begin with. It's mostly empty space that no one really bothered naming, claiming, or really even living in until the time came when the Department of the Interior said, "There's a big hole in America, let's just kind of pretend it's a state until people catch on."

A sobering fact: the population of Ohio is 7th on a list of 50 American states.
Let me give you a virtual tour of Ohio, and this picture will become familiar very quickly, because it resembles all of Ohio.

State destination brochure

A solid eleven-and-a-half million people live in Ohio. That's entirely too many. It's scarily too many. When states came up with mottoes, the legislature of Ohio, consisting of several wrinkly, reluctant old men who clearly have given up on life to the point of administrating a place like Ohio, could doubtedly come up with little more than, "Suck." In fact, that's probably the motto of the Midwest. While California cherishes their motto of, "We like beaches, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sunshine and marijuana" the best the Midwest really has to offer is "suck."

So understand my grave concern over the fact that I was, to any capacity at all, longing to return to Ohio. When it was finally time to drive back, I was lucky that night fell before I solidly entered the Midwest lest I break down into tears and purposely drive off a bridge for the lack of landscape and perfectly flat geography. You see, the main problem is that there would be no bridges, because the highest point in Ohio is two, maybe three inches higher than sea level, so I suspect.

Welcome to Ohio. We had a hill, once.

But imagine my surprise when the next day I saw Ohio covered in glorious snow! Now, if Ohio is an old, haggard woman with no redeeming physical features and no personality, snow is the full body suit that Ohio wears to disguise that fact. And unlike other disguises, which trick you into working for a sewage company for years because of a fake contract or cause you to mistake an assassin for an ordinary garbageman with a bad limp, this one is wonderful and glorious.

"Your qualifications to race in the Indy 500 seem legit,
especially with your racecar driver suit and superb mullet. Hired!"

Or rather, was. Ohio, the state of eternal suck, was not happy with her wondrous appearance. "I have entirely too much of looking beautiful and being desirable," she must've thought in her derelict and barren mind. And so, there came one SINGLE day of nice weather that melted away all the snow and uncovered the horrors beneath, namely, just Ohio. And of course, there was no way nice weather could've lasted either- the day after, it became miserable and horrible and so cold your eyelids could freeze open if you tried to cry at how disgusting the landscape is.

Next time, I'll be writing an article called, "So your eyelids have frozen open again..."