All Over The Plates

By: Jonathan Jones 08/30/2012

By Dobie Maxwell – www.dobiemaxwell.com

   I have fought long and hard throughout my entire life to overcome what some may consider to be tremendous odds. I’ve managed to buck the system more often than not, and scraped together what many consider to be a successful life. That being said, I’m very sympathetic to underdogs.

Rooting for the little guy has become a way of life. I love all the ‘Rocky’ movies, even the later ones when he’s a senior citizen fighting for his parking spot at Denny’s. Bucking the odds is how America became great, and I’m a hardcore fan of anyone who has the guts to challenge the norm.

That being said, even though I totally resent admitting it, stereotypes wouldn’t be stereotypes if there weren’t at least a partial grain of truth surrounding it. Sad as that is it’s unfortunately a true fact. There’s one stereotype that has been bothering me for years, but I refuse to fight it anymore.

When I moved to Chicago from Milwaukee in 1984, I was treated like a total hick fresh off the tractor. People asked if I’d grown up on a farm, and wondered if I had ever seen a tall building in my life. I laughed it off and it eventually went away, and over time I felt like a real Chicagoan.

One thing I learned that Chicagoans and most Illinoisans as a whole think of Wisconsinites as a whole is that they are absolutely horrible drivers. I never knew this growing up in Wisconsin, but I was constantly made aware of a definite prejudice against vehicles with Illinois license plates.

Those people were not so lovingly referred to as ‘F.I.B.s’, an acronym I’m not free to elaborate on what it stands for completely suffice to say the ‘I’ stands for ‘Illinois’. They were the scourge of Wisconsin highways, and stereotyped as maniacs, lunatics and inebriated ogres on the way to either Wisconsin Dells or Door County to run roughshod over our state but spend lots of money.

I believe it was Illinois who fired the first shot in this battle by christening Wisconsin residents as ‘cheese heads’. It was initially meant to be an insult, but Wisconsin totally turned it around by embracing the moniker and making it cute. I have to admit, that’s a pretty impressive strategy.

I also have to begrudgingly admit that after all these years of living in Illinois – they were right about Wisconsin drivers. I don’t care if I was born and raised there or not – and I absolutely was – I have to cringe when I’m on the Tollway and there’s a moron in the left lane babbling away on a cell phone completely clueless to the string of angry cars directly behind that isn’t able to pass.

I’m one of those angry drivers, and before I can see which state the license plate is from, I pray it’s not from Wisconsin. Unfortunately, more often than not it is and I’m ashamed. Why can’t the state of Wisconsin pass out manuals for drivers entering Illinois so they don’t come off as rubes?

I know stereotypes aren’t fair, but they’re there for a reason. Illinois drivers, please slow down in Wisconsin will you please? Maybe you won’t be ticket magnets so often. Cheese heads, speed up in Illinois. Get out of the left lane and hang up that cell phone. You’re making me look bad.