#midwestern things

Here are just a few:

🍞He definitely says Cheese Toastie, so do his parents. (In the part of the Midwest I’m from I had only ever heard it called a cheese toastie until I made friends and someone started calling them “grilled cheese” it shook my world) He will say Cheese Toastie and no one in Metropolis knows what he’s talking. ( based on real events I think it might JUST be my town that called these bitches cheese toasties, it irks me)

🫙He is a Mayonnaise enjoyer ( my mom once told me we were a mayonnaise household, she put that shit on everything and it ruined my social standings) Bratwurst? It gets mayonnaise. Smoked sausage? Gets mayonnaise. Burger?? Mayonnaise. It’s the only correct thing (middle school I learned this was not the typical way for most people to eat a Brat.. I was APPALLED at a middle school picnic to see majority of every put MUSTARD and KETCHUP on a Brat. I had to ask someone for mayo in the cafeteria because they had only put out those two condiments and I felt like a little outcast)

🗣️He will slip in and out of a strange garbled southern accent (my grandparents are midwesterners born and raised. My grandpa does indeed have a strange southern twang to his voice, my grandma used to slip into an accent randomly. I too will pick up an accent where ever I am because of that. It’s evil. My fiance hates it cause his grandma IS SOUTHERN) many words he says will have a weird drawl to them, oil, toilet, wash, iron, a litany of other words will be said weird or ‘wrong.’

Midwest Gothic

-on your way to school you see them waving in the cornfields. You don’t wave back. You know what happens if you wave back.

-When letting out your dog you hear howling from the woods just outside your backyard. You don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a coyote.

-You heard a kid drowned in the lake by his pool last night. You don’t know whether to believe it or not, since he showed up to school today. He asked you if you wanted to come over and play after school.

-You don’t like the winter seasons. You can’t hear the bugs or wildlife anymore. Now theres nothing to deafen what you hear outside your window every night.

-You always fall asleep before 12am. The new day brings out the other things in your house. If you fall asleep, they won’t bother you.

-You’ve always wondered why the house at the end of the street always has all the lights on in their windows. One day they’re all off. You walk past. You don’t want to know what happens there.

-You had to drive out of town yesterday. You saw a billboard sign advertising corn syrup. Nobody ever wants to go into the corn fields anymore.

-The bugs are loud. They’re so loud. You think you’re going crazy, because you think you begin to make out what they are saying. You don’t like their words.

-You don’t believe in ghosts. You never have. You’re not so sure when you see your mother waving to you on your porch. She’s in the bench swing. You want to get rid of that bench swing now.

-You’re home alone; your parents are out doing god knows what. You see a handprint slowly appear on the mirror close to you. You put another piece of popcorn in your mouth. You’re used to it. You’re never alone anymore.

-All the tourists love the old convenience store from the 1930s. You hate it. It reminds you of what happened back then.

-You see a scarecrow in the cornfields. You stare at it for a good while. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until in turns around and you truly see it.