Apropos of nothing #5: Airplane anecdote

I first came to Japan at the end of July, 2001. After our first JET Programme orientation in Chicago, we took off on an ANA jet out of O'Hare.

Also on this ANA flight was some church group out of Milwaukee. Most of them were teens, and they were wearing matching group t-shirts proudly emblazoned with a hand-drawn logo. "Manitou-something-or-other." (Manitou is probably the most over-used Native American word in non-Native-American context.) Anyway, I couldn't describe the group as a whole, but the two guys in the same row as us spent the first hour or so of the flight snarking about the JET Programme and us "losers in suits" who were in it. "Oh, I wanna be a JET toooooo..." was about the wittiest comment they made, but they were still being really annoying.

Finally the guy next to me turned to them and said, politely,

"So, you guys are from Wisconsin, right?"

"Uh, hey, yeah! We --"

"Fuckin' cheeseheads." And with that, he dropped the pretense of wanting to talk to them and turned back to continue our conversation.

This one still makes me laugh even now.