The year was 1999, and school buses across America were ringing with kids loudly yelling, “Whassup?”

You might not believe this, but beer companies used to have commercials that were funny and weren’t trying to make political statements. These commercials had friends picking up telephones, with cords, and yelling at their buddies, “Whassup?”

I was reminded of this the other day as I met a fellow in the grocery store while picking up Tillamook cheese and Darigold chocolate milk. (Sorry, times are tough; we are now doing paid product placement.) Ever the conversationalist, I asked the fellow, “How’s your day goin’?” Which is the modern-day, “Whassup?” This fellow proceeded to unload on me everything going wrong in his life. It was like a sad country song, the kind of country song that’s now been replaced with bragging about how big your truck is. Seriously kids, country music died after the '90s. His wife had left him, kids disliked him, job was terrible. Now it felt like I had this poor, fragile fellow’s life in my hands, and I couldn’t walk away, so I proceeded to listen to his story for 30 minutes and be a listening ear while encouraging him that life could be worse. He could be living in Canada.

Our culture in America is really quite unique. We ask people how they are doing, and yet we don’t really care or want a real answer. We ask someone how their day is going, and they say, “Good,” and ask how our day is going. We say, “Good.”

I stopped to visit a farmer the other day and he asked me how it was going. I responded with a few positive highlights; my wife and kids still liked me and, well, I wasn’t living in Canada. To which he responded, “Well you’re awfully optimistic!”

We as farmers are an interesting dynamic. We have a propensity to like to complain to other farmers outwardly and yet be fiercely optimistic inwardly. Some of that is a learned experience, as we have to tell the IRS and USDA how tough things are while telling our banker that things are going great. My grandfather once said that farmers are like pigs; if they aren’t squealing then they’re dead.

You also have to be optimistic to stay in a business where you plant hundreds of thousands of dollars of seed in the spring and hope that rains, floods, heat and bugs don’t destroy it before you can harvest it in the fall. You have to be optimistic when cows try to jump over fences, under fences and generally do whatever they can to kill themselves. You have to be optimistic that on your morning off, the milker will actually show up. You have to be optimistic that the milk price you get is more than the bills that come in the mail.

For farmers, our therapy tends to be at the coffee shop or sale barn. It’s a place where we can share the ups and downs of our lives. In fact, we tend to make it a competition on who is having the worst time of it. Our European counterparts make fun of us for being fake nice and asking how we are doing. While it may come across as fake, it is also a good tool for us to determine who our true friends are. We all need friends who we can call and who ask how we are doing and truly care about what the answer to that question is. We all need friends who we can call and vent to or complain to. Sometimes, we just need someone to listen. Strive to be the person who will truly listen when someone needs to vent.

Also, let’s bring back the whassup commercials; it would be good for national healing.