For someone who grew up safe in the Southwest, the idea of the Midwest is just a scary story, no more real than werewolves or zombies or werezombies. But soon, all the stories may be proven true. I may wake up one day no longer a Southwesterner but a Midwesterner.

We’ve all heard tales of the Midwest. We’ve seen them in movies like A Christmas Story, Field of Dreams, even children’s movies like Fargo. We’ve heard Garrison Keillor’s weekly horror stories about allegedly growing up in the Midwest. I myself didn’t believe the stories, but soon I’ll immerse myself in the region, in the cornfields and endless piles of Lutherans.

I’ll have to disguise myself to fit in. I’m already quiet, so maybe they won’t recognize that I’m an Arizonan. I’ll have to start eating German and Scandinavian food instead of Mexican. But will I really become one of them? One of those smiling, dry-humor-loving, flat-land-roaming, hotdish-cooking huskers? I’m a fully-fledged American Westerner. My ancestors traversed the Rocky Mountains, settled in the potato fields of Idaho and the great Bitterroot Valley. I have family scattered across Arizona, Utah, Idaho, California, Oregon, Washington, and Montana. Will I transmute into a Midwesterner? Or will I be like the lone survivor of a zombie apocalypse, wandering the fields among the throngs of polka-dancing tundra folk?

I’m sure I’ll end up enjoying life in the Midwest, even if resistance is futile and I start eating hotdish and corn. Or I’ll discover that the Midwest and Southwest aren’t that different, and I’ll fit in just fine, because as important as regional identity is, we should dismantle every wall we allow it to build between us. We’re all in this sinking ship together, after all, and life’s too short to let our differences confine us.

In any case, I’ve lived in Arizona for twenty years: Arizona is a dystopian oligarchy whose capital city, which is a violation of basic human rights by its very existence, is run by a deranged sheriff, and about thirty percent of the population qualifies as a heavily armed militia that wants to improve upon the concept of walls with barbed wire and snipers. If I can survive in Arizona, I can survive anywhere.

-jk