“This one year at an RA training, all the RAs in the system were together in the lecture hall in Taper. And they were giving their presentations on the rules and regulations on the job. And this one area director was giving a presentation on RA-Residents’ relationships and whether or not that would be, you know allowed because that’s a bit of an undefined gray area….um, whether or not it’s like an abuse of power sorta thing and is it a conflict of interest if an RA is interested in dating one of the residents. And the way he defined the rule was he said that ‘If it’s true love, like that’s ok. But true love shouldn’t be happening everyday. So you know, we shouldn’t be dating residents all the time ‘cause that would be bad. But you know, if we were to approach a resident and say Hello! Susie! Um, I think you’re really neat. And I would like to get to know you at a different capacity.’ Um, and then I think at the point, after he said that I think you’re neat and I’d like to know you at a different capacity, the entire room burst out in laughter and that line has become kinda an inside joke for all the RAs and it has shown up in RA skits, and RA films, and basically just whenever we need a laugh we would go up to someone and say ‘Hey! I think you’re neat. I’d like to get to know you at a different capacity.’ Basically this is basically an inside joke you’d know if you’re an RA or if somehow you’re involved in their offices. I’m sure that this joke will come up again this Fall because that rule is gone over at every training. And so I’m sure that when they go over that rule this Fall, they will mention that joke again and if they don’t I will kindly remind them of it.”

This traditional anecdote serves as a way to give identity to new RAs because it’s a form of inclusion and a way of excluding nonmembers. Only RAs would know about this funny story so knowledge of this story makes new RAs feel like they are part of the group and strengthens their bond. This topic also reflects a taboo of intimate relationships between RAs and residents. It’s similar to issues of an employer dating an employee. It is expected that the relationship should be kept professional but at the same time, some people may find it wrong for companies to forbid relationships because it should be a personal decision. It seems more difficult for RAs to justify the relationship because there is no way of separating work from home life because their duty is to deal with personal conflicts in problems in students’ residences.

“Ollie and Lena jokes are this category of jokes based in the Midwest. And there’s this one that’s: Ollie and Lena live on this farm in South Dakota and uh Ollie has to go to town um to go to market. So he goes to the market to buy a bull. So he buys a bull but then, Lena stayed on the farm, but he needs Lena to come and pick up the bull from town…he has to stay in town so he decides to send her a telegram. So he goes to the telegraph office and he realizes that the telegraph is by the word. And that he only has ten cents and it’s ten cents a word. So he thinks about it for a while and he comes up with this great idea and he writes this one word and he pays his ten cents and he sends it to Lena so Lena gets the telegram. She looks at it and she reads it. It’s one word, and the word is: comfortable. So she’s like ‘Com-for-ta-ble.’ So she’s like ‘Yes!’ So she goes to the market and she gets the bull. I heard that joke from my uncle Jean I believe but my dad’s whole family sorta knows a whole bunch of them. They’re mostly told in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota…it’s like a Mid-West region kinda thing. It’s like um a region full of Norwegian immigrants who are not immigrants anymore. It wasn’t populated really that long ago since it started in later states and stuff. A lot of Scandinavian people live there, Norwegian people and German people and um so they’d circulate it amongst themselves like Norwegian people would tell the jokes about themselves. Like Ollie and Lena are Norwegian, and they would tell them about themselves. It’s like a self-deprecating thing, it’s like they sorta humble themselves and don’t take themselves really seriously you know? Even though they might work hard, they don’t think of themselves as, like…they just wanna keep themselves down to earth. The Midwest is a very, like, down to earth, stick-to-the-basics kinda place. Ollie and Lena jokes often have a lot of Norwegian culture in them like lefsa will appear in them or bars or things about farming and all that. And they do stuff that is really typical and stereotypical of Norwegian people. The punchline of this joke is basically derived from the fact that um immigrants or Norwegian people don’t necessarily have a very good accent, I know even now people in the Midwest have an accent and do weird things with their ‘Os’…so one of the things we would say is ‘fer’ instead of ‘for’ and ‘da’ instead of ‘the’ so ‘com-for-ta-ble’ sounds exactly like ‘come for the bull’ to them.”

I find it interesting that even though this joke makes fun of the accent spoken in the Midwest, it seems from Sarah’s account that Ollie and Lena jokes are something that Norwegians and people from the Midwest are proud of. To them, it’s a form of identification because one can tell if another person if from Midwest or is Norwegian if they have knowledge of these jokes. These Ollie and Lena jokes are very exclusive and imply that you have to be from that region to understand and appreciate them.