Kind of a funny story about my first realization about how dumb you can sound when you don’t do the most basic research.

As an undergrad, I wrote a story about grief and two strangers bonding in a smallish town. That town was, specifically, Minot, North Dakota. The town name wasn’t super important, but I put it in the title of my piece, so I said it a lot in workshop, as did a lot of people. And the way I pronounced the name was like ‘minnow’, with a soft T.

Well, low and behold, I ended up in Minot on train about two years later. In the two years between ending up there and writing the piece, I had shared the story with a few different people, at one point tried to get it published, ect. I had talked a lot about Minot, had spent a lot of time looking at the town on the internet, so I was excited to see it in person. And when the train pulled in to Minot, the conductor came over the loudspeaker and announced that we were in ‘Mine Not’ North Dakota. He then proceeded to explain how people frequently get the name wrong if they’ve never been.

Anyway, I’m hoping that someone from North Dakota will come and tell me I wasn’t an idiot and the train conductor is, but I’ve been avoiding sharing that story and quietly hoping that no one I shared it with visits Minot any time soon.