If you want to hear some supposedly smart people say some unbelievably stupid things, I suggest you go off to college out-of-state and tell people you're from Nevada.
This is exactly what I did a handful of years ago. In my case, the out-of-state was California, and the people were Stanford University freshmen like myself.
Now, for your amusement, I will now tell you some of these moronic verbalizations that my fellow freshmen, honest to God, came up with after learning I was from the Silver State:
-- "You're from Nevada? I didn't know people lived there. I thought all there were was casinos!"
-- "Oh ... so, like, did your family have any problems with the radiation from all those nuclear bombs?"
-- "So, what is it like to live in the desert?"
-- "Have you ever been to a prostitute? 'Cause it's legal there, right?"
-- "Do you gamble a lot?"
And, my personal favorite:
-- "You're from Reno? Wow, it must be cool to live so close to Las Vegas!"
I could put up with these silly remarks. I just assured people that, respectively:
-- "Yes, people live there, because someone has to work in the casinos."
-- "No, I know of no radiation-caused mutations in my immediate family Except for my cousin, Bert, who has 26 toes."
-- "Yes, living in the desert is fun except for the sand that gets in your underwear."
-- "No, I ain't ever been to a ho, unless you're talking about your mama."
-- "Yes, I gamble a lot. How the hell do you think I am paying to go here, you idiot?"
And, finally:
-- "Have you ever seen a map, you cretin?"
I was a sarcastic a little bugger. Can you tell?
But the one thing I could not put up with was that all these people, from all over the country, pronounced "Nevada" incorrectly. You probably know what I am talking about; if you don't, turn on CNN or any national TV network and listen to them pronounce "Nevada." When they say "Nevada," it sounds like they've been hit with a sudden burst of refreshment in the middle of the word:
"The TCU football team destroyed Nev-AHHHHH-da yesterday, 41-10."
Now, when people from Nevada say "Nevada" we sound like we've been stung by something unpleasant in mid-word:
"Man, TCU sure creamed Nev-AAAAA-da last weekend!"
Anyway, back to college. Whenever someone pronounced the word wrong, it would drive me into a fit where I had to correct them for the sake of my mental well-being. (The people from Oregon were the same way whenever someone pronounced the state Ore-GONE, so I wasn't alone in my anti-social freakishness.)
One of the highlights of my freshman year -- and this just goes to show that I needed a life -- was a friendly argument I got into during lunch one day.
A friend of mine, a guy named Brent, was harassing me about my anti-Nev-AHHHHH-da zealotry. He was trying to convince me that everyone else was right when they said "Nev-AHHHHH-da," and that we Nev-AAAAA-dans were just wrong all around.
"Isn't Nevada a Spanish word?" he asked me.
"Yep. It means snow-capped or something like that," I replied.
"Well," Brent said, his facial expression showing a sly smile signifying that he was about to make a point, "which is closer to the Spanish pronunciation of the word -- Nev-AHHHHH-da or Nev-AAAAA-da?"
Brent had a point. Except for one thing: He came from the great state of Texas.
I showed him the error of his ways. "So, Brent, how do you suppose you should say the name of your state? Tejas?"
He looked at me stunned, knowing he had just suddenly lost the debate.
"OK, Jimmy, you have a great point."
From then on out, everyone sitting at the table properly pronounced Nev-AAAAA-da.
As these experiences illustrate, we all have conceptions of people, places and things that we don't really know about. And we need to be careful; after all, a small amount of knowledge is often very dangerous.
Especially if someone from Nev-AAAAA-da or Ore-gun is around. We'll kick your butt.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nev-AAAAA-dan who is damn proud of that fact. His column appears here Tuesdays, and an archive of past columns can be found at http://www.geocities.com/jiboegle.