There is a niceness to Midwest culture, they say. I think only people from the Midwest say it. They say it about themselves, how nice they are to eachother, and so polite, these people! To eachother, anyway. Not to me, a lot of the times!

I don’t find it nice at all. I have been here for eight months, and I don’t think it’s so nice. Here’s why, and it’s just because of a specific day that I walked across the crosswalk in the snow. And I already thought it wasn’t all that nice, like the people, specifically, but this was what broke his back. The camel’s.

So yeah. It was snowing and pretty damn cold out. I had a coat on, like a jacket, and some other stuff. And I approached the four-way intersection, which even through the snowfall, I could see the traffic lights, so I could know when it was my turn to cross the street. I was facing the coffee place that I was going to get things from, and maybe sit, if my seat I liked was available.

To my left was a black Jeep, driving in my direction. They had the green light, and I had the red. So therefore, we can deduce that the Jeep was in the right of way. Well you see, the Jeep had conflicting thoughts about that.

The Jeep approached the four-way, and slowed down to the middle of the street. The headlights flashed on and off, and an arm popped out of the top of the drivers side door, signaling me to cross, even though it wasn’t my turn. Oh yeah, and I had headphones with me too, and those were in. But I could hear a honk, which annoyed me more than any part of this. And the whole thing was very annoying to me. It was their turn, for god’s sake!

I moved my mouth making words but not actually speaking them, mouthing It’s Your Go It’s Your Go and holding my left arm up and motioning with my wrist to try to get them to just go ahead and go. And so, like that, I heard ANOTHER damned honk! From THEIR horn!

I crossed the street begrudgingly, and acting so; describing how one walks begrudgingly is difficult, but just imagine being at the dinner table, and your dad asks you if you want a glass of water, and you say yes, and he says, well get up and get one.

After crossing the street, another damned honk (and the headphones are turned on, I forgot to mention, but so yeah, I could even hear these horns over the songs that were playing in them) and that made me look behind to see what was going on, like were they trying to be mad at me or let me know that they were pretty frigging upset with me. And yeah, The black Jeep stopped, and a woman stepped out of it, the driver actually, and she did this after she put it in park, either that or her car broke when she stopped it, and the whole intersection thing was cause her car broke right then and there, and neither of us were really at fault from the whole thing. But I bet she put it in park. And she stepped out, and I removed my headphones from my ears, pulling them down like a hoodie’s hood, resting them around my neck, like a cool person does and would do.

She stepped out, like I said, and not that it matters, but she was this white lady, real weird looking one. Like probably forty, but hard to tell for people my age. She had a big bush of red curly hair, and she had a face that made me think of Cathy, that comic book character, like when she would look worried. Her face was jagged like how I remember Cathy, just big and aggressive randomly. And she was standing outside of her car with the door open and yelling things at me and calling me this and that, which was gay. I didn’t say anything, cause honestly I was kind of fearful of her. Which was gay too. She called me a faggot and it all seemed like she was really mad, but I wish she would take a step back and think that this wasn’t my fault at all! Not at all. So then it turns out there’s this guy in the passenger seat, and it doesn’t matter either, but he was a black guy, and he stepped out of his side of the car, too, but he seemed really cool. Like didn’t want to make a fuss or anything. Like he gave me this look for a second like he was just bummed to be a part of this, and I wanted to make a face back that made him know that I felt the same way. But she was doing all this yelling in between us.

He was wearing a huge black t-shirt, and under that was a even huger white t-shirt, so it looked like if it was all one shirt, it’d be like a black ringer t-shirt, and the white one just barely stuck out, so it reminded me of a ringer like that. But a really, really big one. I hadn’t seen somebody wear two t-shirts like that in forever, it seemed. I realized that it had been at least five years since I had seen somebody do that in real life, and it made me like him more, like he seemed like he was being himself. And it was snowing, by the way, and that’s what he was wearing, but still, he was definitely great. His chest and head: Visible to me from where I stood. The rest of him: Not at all. He was standing too, and waving his arms towards himself, like wagging his wrists towards himself, but like at his lady friend, maybe they were romantically ally together, if you catch my drift. And his arms spoke to her “Let’s just get in the car and go,” or that’s how I read it. But yet she was screaming at me, and now she was like walking towards me, still saying all this mother fuckin’ bullshit! About how I’m fucking fat and how she was just being nice. And although she was fatter and also seemed even less nice than me. Which was crazy. But yeah, so that’s completely ironic.

And then a little dog jumped out from somewhere in her Jeep, and that same damn dog then ran towards me, and then the lady seemed to spin around or just be surprised by this, like she was so mad at me and then shocked about her little dog that she looked at me, the dog, and her passenger in like a half a second, and it looked like she was just doing the Exorcist thing. And the dog went past me, right under my legs, or near them, but it feels cinematically better for it to have gone right under my legs. Let’s say between the legs. And she started running towards the dog, and yelled “Why didn’t you grab him you shithead!” She said this to me, of all people. And then ran past me, and called me a faggot as she shoved me into the brick building I was standing next to, and then just kept on runnin.’

I watched her chase the dog and she got smaller and smaller in my vision, the dog even smaller! And I just laughed a bit, thinking it was so damn funny. I put my headphones back on, smiling, like how somebody cool as hell would do. And then I thought to myself, THE BLACK GUY. WHAT ABOUT HIM? Cause I forgot he was there. He was still just standing there! And it turned out to be so funny, as well. He looked at me, rendering us to be looking at one another. And he gave me this smirk-style face, put his left palm over his eyes, shaking his head in disappointment, like, Damn, Man! Like he was saying to me, yeah, try living with her, man! I gave him a laugh-style face, like smiling but my mouth was kind of open. I was happy to see that he wasn’t mad, at all, or at least not at me. He was probably pissed about this whole thing but it was super cool of him not to just take his friend’s side. So if anybody from the Midwest was nice, it was him. He walked around to the other side of the car, and got in it, and drove it away, probably to go find her, but maybe to just go somewhere else. That would be the funniest thought ever, if he just said hell no! And just left her to walk home. But he was actually super nice, so I bet he picked her up. So that’s been awesome.

I went into that coffee place, and this is what happened; my seat was available! So I sat in it. But before that, I definitely ordered some things from the guy working. And I told him that whole story about the ugly woman, and told him about the cool shit that the guy did. And he said “Nice” to me, but was congested, cause seasonal shit, for sure. And it sounded like “Dice.” He laughed, said, “That’s Bidwest Dicedess for ya.”