True-ish Stories of North Dakota Weather

It is so cold here.

It is so cold here that even my Husky mutt does not want to go outside.

It is so cold here that the movie Frozen is starting to really tick me off.

It is so cold that I am currently huddled inside three layers of pajamas, between the micro-fleece sheets of my loft bed, surrounded by three or four additional blankets and I'm still shivering.

Humans... do not... belong here.

Anyway, the only perk I can spin out of the awful blizzardy weather we've been having is that people from out of state will pretty much believe whatever you tell them about the famous climate. Here are a few sort of probable stories to pull out, hopefully somewhere warm and sunny.

You lost your garage once and had to wait for the snow to melt to find it again.

Your tongue is fake, and the original is still stuck to a pole on your elementary school playground, where you were dared to lick the pole, and then the supervisors left your tongue there to scare off other kids, because everyone has done that at least once.

You lost your cell phone in a snow bank and thought it was gone for good until early that June, when it was found in the grass of your front yard.

If there are little kids around, tell them that you live in an igloo in the winter, and in the summer, you follow the buffalo.

Better yet, in the winter, the whole community has a giant prolonged sleepover in an Iroquois-style longhouse, and the different neighborhoods take turns cooking every night. Because you know, if it was going to happen, it would happen in Fargo.

There's a weather phenomenon called a "snow demon" where a cloud of shrieking wind drives razor-sharp chunks of ice into whatever gets in its way.

Another true story: You used to wake up with frost on your pillows because you slept too close to the wall and your breath crystallized. Did this happen to anybody else? It used to happen to me all the time.

If you inhale snow, you may contract snow fever, which is a sort of weird fungal disease where snow starts to grow in the bottom of your lungs and works its way up until you're coughing flurries. (Note: This is a good one to tell when the audience is actually there in North Dakota visiting you, because you get to watch them squirm when you tell them the symptoms are prolonged shivering, numb feet, and a red red nose.)

The North Dakotan "rivers" you see on maps are a myth, because they actually only exist in the spring when all the snow melts.

That is also the time when school is held on massive community houseboats.

In fact, everyone's house floats, so that the flood does no damage, and then when the water finally goes down everyone lands in a different place to keep things interesting.

And then it starts to snow.

Again.