Rose: I remember when I was a little girl back in St. Olaf. There was this old lady who lived up the street. She never smiled. I mean, she always looked angry. The kids said she'd kill anyone who even stepped on her property. We called her Mean Old Lady Higgenlooper.
Blanche: Yeah, kids can be pretty cruel.
Rose: No. That was her name. Mean Old Lady Higgenlooper. She had it changed legally 'cause everybody called her that anyway.
Blanche: Then how come your name isn't Big Dummy?
Rose: Well, there were already three other people in town with that name. But that's beside the point. One day I got up the courage to go up to Mean Old Lady Higgenlooper and ask her why she always frowned. Well, she had been born with no smiling muscles. I pointed out that a frown is just a smile turned upside down. So from then on, whenever I'd go by, she'd stand on her head and wave.

Rose: Well, it wasn't unnatural in St. Olaf. We not only took care of our old people, we revered them, honored them, put them on a pedestal. 'Course, that's how we got to be the broken hip capital of the Midwest.

Rose: Oh, good, you're home for the Festival of the Dancing Virgins. The sauce is almost ready.
Dorothy: I'm not staying for dinner tonight. There's a meeting at Mensa. That's the organization for people with high IQs like mine.
Rose: You know, in St. Olaf we had a chapter of Mensa, and across the room was Girlsa. No, wait, those were the bathrooms at St. Olaf's only Italian restaurant.

Rose: Therapy's a wonderful idea. Oh, I remember St. Olaf's most famous psychotherapists, the Freud brothers, Sigmund and Roy. You may have read their bestseller, "If I Have All the Cheese I Want, Why Am I Still Unhappy?"

Rose: I sure miss a traditional St. Olaf Christmas.
Dorothy: Excuse me, Rose, do we have time to run out and get hit by a bus?
Rose: First there'd be the Christmas pageant, with the shepherds and the angels and the two wise men.
Blanche: There were three wise men, Rose.
Rose: Not in St. Olaf. Then we'd all go down to the town square and try to form a circle. And then we'd all go home and smoke kippers.
Blanche: Why, Rose?
Rose: Because it's the best way to get your house to smell like kippers. And then in keeping with the spirit of Christmas, it was traditional to let all the animals sleep inside that night. And then, the next morning, the rumors would start. And they'd continue until New Year's, and we'd all make resolutions that it would never happen again. But then, the next year, all it took was a little eggnog and one wise guy saying, "What the hell! It's Christmas."

Rose: That's a St. Olaf war bond. Charlie bought us those in '42. I didn't realize I still had those.
Blanche: Wait a minute. Are you telling me that St. Olaf printed its own war bonds?
Rose: Yes. Oh, we were very patriotic. In late '42, we wanted to fund the development of a top-secret weapon that we were sure would end the war. Attack cows.
Blanche: Take me now, Lord.
Rose: No one expects trouble from a cow. The plan was, we would drop these highly trained killer cows behind the enemy lines. It wasn't till they were airborne that we realized a cow can't pull a rip cord. Well, the project wasn't a total failure. If there's one thing the Germans hate, it's a mess.

Rose: Oh, speaking at Career Day is quite a responsibility. I still remember Career Day back in St. Olaf.
Sophia: Check, please.
Rose: Gunther Hanchap, St. Olaf's leading shepherd and notary, came to speak. It was so moving when he talked about his solitary existence with the sheep. No human contact for months at a time. Ugh. Just building a special relationship with God's simple creatures. I really wanted to help.
Blanche: So you decided to become a shepherd?
Rose: No. I decided to give Gunther a case of Scotch. And he really appreciated it, until he discovered what mean drunks sheep are. They're kind of like cows when they're drunk. You know what I mean?

Dorothy: Look, Marguerite is a lovely person. She just cannot do the job.
Rose: [sighs] I hate to admit it, but you're right. We had a similar situation back in St. Olaf, with Mrs. Gunderson, our grade school teacher. Oh, she was the nicest woman you'd ever want to meet, but as the years went by, she got her facts a little confused. In biology class she started telling kids that the human body was made up of 80% Ovaltine. While we were studying WWI, she told us mustard gas was something you got from eating too many hot dogs. That's why to this day in St. Olaf, everyone celebrates the 4th of July with a thin omelet on a bun.
Dorothy: What do you say after we fire Marguerite, we each chip in and get Rose a CAT scan.

Rose: Please, Blanche, please. I'm too scared to go back to my room. This kind of thing has always frightened me, ever since I was a little girl, when I first heard my parents whispering about the St. Olaf slasher.
Blanche: Slasher?
Rose: Yes. Oh, he terrorized St. Olaf for months. In the dark of night, he'd sneak into an unsuspecting farmer's field and mercilessly slash his scarecrow to shreds.
Blanche: He was a scarecrow slasher?
Rose: Primarily. Although he was suspected in the disfigurement of several whisk brooms. Oh, I was so scared at night, I'd sleep in the closet so he couldn't find me.

Rose: Dorothy, in times like these, you have to hold onto your faith, just like Hans Gluckenflunken, St. Olaf's greatest explorer.
Dorothy: Rose, please, let me have a little recovery time before you start a St. Olaf story.
Rose: You see, Hans Gluckenflunken set out for Florida to find the Fountain of Intelligence. Unfortunately, when he got to Duluth, he took a left instead of a right and he wound up back in St. Olaf. That's how he got his nickname, Wrong Way Gluckenflunken.
Dorothy: Rose, how is this a story about faith?
Rose: Well, when he got back, it was the dead of winter. Tired and hungry, but still clinging to his belief that he would find the Fountain of Intelligence, he saw the miracle water trickling out of the ground, and he fell to his knees and tasted it. Unfortunately, it was a broken sewer main. Two days later, he died of cholera.
Dorothy: What is the point, Rose?
Rose: He was positive he had found the Fountain of Intelligence. In fact, his dying words were, "I think I've learned something from this."