Several months ago GeoFool and I took a trip to Nashville to find a
few geocaches. While we were there, we had the pleasure of meeting
up with several local cachers. One of the guys we met was
"Monkeybrad" Now Monkeybrad is a nice friendly guy but I noticed he
had this kind of attitude about him. Not really a bad attitude,
Just a kind of independence. Kind of like: I'm gonna hide caches
anyway I like and if you don't like it, you don't have to look for
them. Well, I knew right away I was gonna like this guy and I made
it a point to go out and find some of his caches! GeoFool and I did
find several of his caches and most were great! One of the ones
that stood out in my mind was a cache called "Don't be a Joter" Now
this cache was nothing exciting but just reading the description
was entertaining enough for me. I have included the original cache
description below for you to read.
I just want to say "Thank You!" to MonkeyBrad for inspiring me
to hide this cache and I also want to encourage all cachers to keep
hiding them the way you like. Different people like to search for
different things and the variety is what keeps this game fun for
most of us.
Original Text from "Don't Be a Joter by
Monkeybrad
It is funny how little things come back to haunt you...
As some of you know I used to work in the entertainment
business, this story comes from those days. Many moons ago when the
world was young, a film called The Green Mile made with many middle
Tennessee locations used. I served in this endeavour in a very
small capacity, but this story is not about me, it is about Michael
Yoder (pronounced like Joter, don't ask me why). Yoder was a recent
film school grad who was working on the picture. Yoder was very by
the books, he had learned how things should be done, and he was
going to make sure that people were going to do things his way.
This was fine in his own department, but when he started telling
other folks how they should run their departments the trouble
began. Yoder would walk around and if he saw something he disagreed
with he would either loudly berate the person doing it or he would
go behind their backs and turn them in. We all know what kind of a
jerk I am talking about, but this guy was unbelievable. The real
problem was he thought he knew everything and had appointed himself
everyone's keeper, unfortunately, he only had opinions, not
experience, so no one took him seriously.
One sunny day, one of the guys I was working with started giving
me a hard time, because he wanted to approach a problem differently
than I did. I looked him straight in the face and said, "Don't be
such a Joter!" Well, it turns out I was overheard by some of the
guys on the crew. It became a running joke and from then on
whenever some inexperienced know it all tried to tell people what
to do they would be referred to as a Joter.
I had dinner the other night with an old buddy who is still "in
the business", and while we were talking he referred to a guy as a
Joter. I made him stop and explain what that meant. Here is the
funny thing, although it's origins had been lost, guys in the biz
are still using the term I coined. How cool is that?
Now to tie it all together. In this great game we all love there
are very few hard and fast rules, but lots of conventions. There
are lots of people who try to tell other people how they should
play this game, unfortunately, just like Michael their convictions
are based on opinion, not truth. It just seemed to me that since
this phrase has come back home to me that it would be particularly
appropriate to use it in geocaching as well. I think we should all
strive to not be Joters.
So the next time you feel the need to tell someone that they are
wrong, because they are playing in a way you disagree with, stop
and ask yourself are they really wrong, or are they just doing
something in a different way than the one you like. In other words,
are they wrong or a you a Joter?