The Hoosier syndrome

There are lots of things that I like about living in Indy, but there are also some things I just can't get over about this state. One of these is the prevailing Hoosier attitude that if you're not married and pumping out kids by the time you're 24, you're clearly some kind of freak. The panic on the faces of single women nearing their 25th birthdays is a sight to behold. Because of this, I tend to meet a lot of people here who are married to their high school sweethearts or the first person they dated in college (IU or Purdue, of course—nobody seems to go anywhere else). Some, I must admit, are quite happy. The others make me realize why this country's divorce rate hovers around 50%.

Only in a state where this type of thinking is the norm would you find an article like this one be the front page story on the Indiana Living section of the Indianapolis Star. Now, no one would ever expect the Star to challenge the New York Times or Washington Post in terms of quality, but you would think they could do better than the bombshell that maintaining a long-distance relationship with your high school sweetheart is difficult when you choose different colleges. Thank goodness we have a daily paper that can give us shocking revelations such as that. To most normal Americans, this is common sense, and your high school sweetheart remains that forever—a nice memory from your teenage years. But in Indiana, when college is just a way to kill time until your wedding, this is a big issue. Big enough to be front page news, apparently.