Lauren Biscaldi

“Where are you from?”

It was my first day of college, and the question echoed around my head, almost menacingly. My shoulders tensed while I thought of an appropriate response. I grappled with the idea of lying—deciding not to when I realized that if I’m not from New Jersey, then I’m from New York (“Excelsior,” Est. 1778; State Bird: Eastern Bluebird; State Insect: Ladybug). My face began to puff up with hives and my mouth went dry, the peculiar sensation of hours passing rather than seconds overwhelmed me and I spit the three syllables around my tongue: “New Jersey.”

 “Fuck.”

It was one syllable, muttered from somewhere behind me, a biting remark I had heard before. I felt like an alien—there had never been so many people staring at me so curiously in my life. I imagined that I was on display at the National Zoo, a bronze plaque hanging below my cage: “Jersey Girl—homenium carniverum” People were pointing and laughing, and I was standing there, dazed, clenching the bars of my cage, not really sure what I had done wrong. I tried to speak, but the only sound that came out gurgled, stalling somewhere in the back of my throat, and just as suddenly as the vision had started, I was back in the present, standing with my roommate and my neighbors in the alcove between our two rooms.

If you find yourself unfamiliar with New Jersey Syndrome, these symptoms may seem overdramatic. Larger than life. Obnoxious, really, when you think about it. For us, though (and by “us,” I reference those who suffer from New Jersey Syndrome on a daily basis), this seemingly disagreeable circumstance that we live with day in and day out really is nothing. Once you’ve been told that you live in the “Armpit of America” (the name attributed to us by the rest of the eastern seaboard and most of the contiguous forty-eight states), you feel practically invincible.

But perhaps I am giving you the wrong idea. Perhaps by explaining these symptoms I am perpetrating the misconception that we are embarrassed by our cultural heritage. Allow me right now to put these rumors to bed. New Jersey Syndrome is a result of neither embarrassment nor humiliation, but an evolutionary reaction, instilled in us since before the days of Darwin; a defense mechanism, our way of reacting to oft-made comments suggesting that our state’s toxicity level causes us to glow in the dark. Contrary to your (potentially) popular belief, dear reader, my proximity to Newark Bay has not caused any unfortunate side effects in my physical development, and although I have been known to make this joke perhaps once or twice before, I take offense to your ignorance. We are, in fact, more than capable of operating vehicles traveling at high speeds on the New Jersey Turnpike, and no, I cannot tell you where the nearest tanning salon is located. I am unfamiliar with the ghettoes of Newark and Camden, because those are places that I avoid, quite literally, on pain of death.

There is no known cure for New Jersey Syndrome, but in recent years, great strides have been made towards classifying and diagnosing these symptoms. Existing treatment includes allotting time during every day for healthy doses of road rage and unabashed cursing. Drivers should flip off no fewer than three out of state drivers during any given morning commute. Go to a 24-hour diner and order a pot of coffee, then sit in traffic that has no beginning, no ending, and no apparent purpose. Apologize sincerely to the rest of the world for the existence of “Jersey Shore,” and at least one unfortunate symptom will be sure to disappear. Doctors recommend the simple lifestyle choice of appreciating a good thing when it’s right in front of your face.

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I might tawlk funny, ask for a cup of cawfee, and complain about my obnoxious bawss, but not everyone from New Jersey is an uneducated, tequila-swilling moron, as MTV would have you believe. The state bird is the Eastern Goldfinch. The state flower is the Purple Violet. There are twenty-one counties in New Jersey, and I possess the unique ability to sing them to you, alphabetically no less. This knowledge I can specifically attribute to the Bayonne Board of Education and its public school curriculum, committed in both its excellence to education and the arts. Nine years after my slightly traumatizing debut in “New Jersey and You,” the P.S. #14 fourth grade musical, I can still recall and recite what most would consider mundane information. (The PNC Bank Arts Center is one of New Jersey’s premier centers of cultural learning, betcha didn’t know that, did you?) We lined up in our nine-year-old finest, taking turns standing awkwardly on stage while our parents snapped pictures in earnest. I was dressed in a matching jean-skirt and jacket ensemble, but the person I truly feel bad for now is the girl dressed up as the state of New Jersey, her chubby, fourth-grade face poking glumly through the cardboard cutout’s middle.

 We sang songs with titles including “We Want Some Jersey Tomatoes,” “The Twenty-One Counties,” and “New Jersey and You,” conveying relevant information to our parents and grandparents, people who certainly already knew all of this anyway, in a slightly cheesy, very campy way that would make even the grumpiest old sucker smile. Even from a young age, New Jersey Pride is both encouraged and championed, but there is one lesson that even our “New Jersey And You” textbooks left out: our fierce devotion to the Garden State often leads us to turn on our own. Inner-state turf wars flare constantly—Northerners hating Southerners, city-savvy Easterners scoffing at the farmers of the West, South Jersians telling Trenton to go back to Philly where it belongs. Facebook groups have spread these feelings of animosity further than the confines of our state’s borders—groups such as “Da 2O1” proclaim their allegiance to the Hudson and Bergen County areas, while groups like “908: The REAL New Jersey” cite themselves as the true citizens of this state.

Since the day we became a state—December 18, 1787 for those of you keeping track—we have been a premier exporter of raw, undiluted talent and personality. With the likes of Aaron Burr (shot Alexander Hamilton), Meryl Streep (no explanation needed), from Frank Sinatra (maybe mobster, maybe not), William Carlos Williams (“I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox”), Wendy Williams (no relation to William Carlos), and Zebulon Montgomery Pike (yeah, that guy) on our team roster, I dare you to find a state more able-bodied than we are. For as much that is known about these cultural icons of New Jersey, however, our knowledge on their encounters with New Jersey Syndrome (if any) is severely limited. It is commonly thought, however, that things in the ilk of disgraced political careers, Oscars and Golden Globes, rumored mafia connections, published poetry, television talk shows, and remote mountainous monuments often serve as appropriate barriers against the symptoms fared by myself and my kin.

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Oft pitied for its cross-genus nature, the neither-fruit-nor-vegetable tomato is one of the premier exports that our state has to offer. It remains overshadowed, though, by exports in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and petroleum-based industries. It is our name in these highly profitable fields that supports the countrywide stereotype that New Jersey is, at its core, a special kind of cancerous, festering ulcer. Based on eighteen years first-hand experience, I can claim a fair amount of confidence in my assessment of our overall toxicity: acid rain should be considered our state rainfall, and, in some places, our state soil should probably be upgraded from “none” to “highly dangerous,” but the overall quality of life remains enjoyable. I firmly believe that it is you, out-of-staters, who suffer from both a misconstrued perspective and an impermissible quality of life. It is I who cough and wheeze in your state; perhaps it is a simple case of your air being too clean. To my Pennsylvanian friend who crudely suggested that my great state be, quite rudely, bombed flat: think before you speak. Pennsylvanians may gain a beach, but the rest of the East Coast may inherit a gruesome, toxic death as our factories implode and spew out centuries of once-contained greenhouse gas.