Texas

Sometimes it’s a funny thing to claim Texas. I’m pretty sure over the years I’ve attempted to play off the ignorance of more than one cousin from Utah, trying to convince them that all we had in our front yard was cactus. When I was in college, I’d protest to my fellow students that there really weren’t that many people in Texas with cowboy hats, big trucks, or thick accents only to come home for a break and be a bit surprised at how many people there actually were that had cowboy hats, big trucks, big hair, etc. On my mission, my MTC companion teased me about being from the sticks, and I think I was coming to close to convincing her I wasn’t, that I really was a city girl, until a year later when we were in the field and my dad wrote me a series of letters about the “critters” he was finding in the front yard, culminating with a picture (the only picture my dad sent me on the mission) of the possum he proudly caught in the yard and took to the lake. A few weeks after this my sister sent me a video for Christmas and I had to admit that compared to flowering, fruit-growing, mountainous California, Texas did look pretty flat and desolate that December. And to top it off, my sister had a slight accent on the video and she filmed herself in one of her new hobbies working with horses. It was a funny defeat. So today as I drove home and thought sadly of the new monstrosity overtaking the nice jogging path across the street, I had to admit again that it’s pretty hard not to admit that Texas really does, at least in some ways, fit the stereotype. I mean, come on, it’s like I’m now living in a natural gas field. Just one small step away from living in an oil field.