Our theme for the month of October is “states.”
My mother, like every good teacher, would tell stories about her life to her students—particular stories about my siblings and me that she would trot out yearly, practically a part of her curriculum. When we were actually physically in her class, she would skip them as a show of grace towards our hyper socially aware middle school selves. This meant, however, that every other student who went through middle school English knew about the time when I was five and my parents told me that heaven was full of mashed potatoes.
In their attempt to explain the concepts of heaven and hell to us, my parents told us that heaven was full of all the good things you could ever want.
“Like mashed potatoes?” I said, in all my five-year-old wisdom.
“Yes, heaven is full of mashed potatoes,” one of them said.
In class, my mom would say that for weeks, she was afraid I would run out into traffic to try to be hit by a car because I was so enraptured with the idea of a place that was full of the best thing I could possibly conceive of: the humble potato.
I can’t remember a time when potatoes weren’t my favorite food. It was a staple in my diet, from instant mashed potatoes I would make in the microwave when we had a side dish I didn’t like to buying and eating through a ten pound bag of russets on my own. My first cooking disaster happened when my dad put me in charge of making the mashed potatoes and told me to fill a mug with milk to throw in. I found the biggest mug in the cupboard, filled it to the brim, and then subsequently ruined the potatoes so thoroughly we had to supplement it with instant mashed potatoes to make them passable. I ate a raw potato whole while camping, just so I could know what it was like. I love potatoes.
You can see why my elementary school brain latched onto Idaho.
I thought I could blame this on the board game Scrambled States of America for clueing me into the great potato-ness of Idaho, but it only lists Idaho’s official nickname as the “Gem State,” coming from a common misconception about the meaning of Idaho (a word that was essentially made up—there’s a whole other post right there). Somewhere in the seas of early indoctrination into American greatness, Idaho stuck in my head as that potato state. And that’s where my knowledge ends.
There was a moment in middle school when I was struck with the fact that students across the United States were learning the same history as me—Revolutionary War, Boston Tea Party, Battle of Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill—but I was the one who got to literally visit those places. I passed the site of the Boston Massacre every week as we drove to church. There were kids in Idaho learning about my home state, but I cannot recall a time when the reverse happened.
I could do some research and tell you some facts about Idaho, but Idaho feels to me a reminder that there is so much of this country that easily falls out of sight. The last time I thought about Idaho was cursing it for turning red on November 5th 2024. I’m not sure I’ve even met someone from Idaho. Montana is at least known for being big and wide open; Idaho is simply the weird looking state between it and cool hipster Washington, known for potatoes.
If I ever get the traveling bug, I’d like to see Idaho (well, the west coast, but I can make a stop for Idaho). I’m sure there are some lovely pieces of history and some wonderful people there, and maybe even some wonderful mashed potatoes.
Alex Johnson (‘19) is a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. She spends her days being an uncool adult who enjoys reading romance novels and explaining niche rhythm game strategies.
