When I think of a Texan I think of a cowboy with a low IQ and an ignorant sounding twang that got rich when he struck oil. This Texas cowboy also has the awful tendency to feel entitled to anything he wants because he is in, “God’s country.”
Ugh, gag me.
I was not born in Texas. I was born in Landstuhl, Germany on an Air Force base that granted me the United States citizenship prized by many but despised by me who didn’t want to claim those roots. I wanted to be European.
Check Point Charlie where East meets West Germany – Proving my non-Texas birth and early life.
To set the record straight I have owned boots but never a cowboy hat. When I was 7 years old or so I owned a white pair of boots with sequins and tassels down the side. I wore those boots till they turned yellow and fell apart. I still love movement on clothing and attribute it to the tassels on those white boots. With my love of movement on clothing I could have been a stripper I suppose or gone the path of the tribal inspired hipsters that waltz around Austin. I choose neither and prefer J. Crew and Anthropologie for clothing inspiration. Thank God I became fascinated with Audrey Hepburn and old movie starlets in middle school.
At any rate, I never had the urge to claim my Texas roots that are planted deep on my father’s side and have become permanent transplants in recent years on my mother’s side. When asked where I was from I would claim Germany before ever mentioning that I had lived in Texas for the majority of my life. I wanted the mystery associated with being from overseas.
On a mysterious pint-sized European adventure in London.
The thought of becoming the ignorant sounding Texan I hated frightened me. It frightened me so much that in high school I decided I would live abroad the rest of my life so that my roots floated above the world rather than dug deep into Texas soil.
Well, lets fast forward a few years now. I have graduated from the University of Texas (so much for going out of state and/or international) and now live in Bangkok, Thailand with my husband. I have never missed Texas soil as much as I do now. After meeting the man I love, getting married and starting life with Jay in Texas it is strange to not call it a special place in my heart. So, strange that now I miss it when I used to loathe it.
Two Texas graduates about to runaway to Bangkok.
When asked where I am from by a Thai I say, “Texas” without hesitation and then quickly correct myself with the added, “America.” The first time I endured this Freudian slip I had an inner panic attack that made the little voice inside my head cry out in pain, “YOU’VE BECOME THAT PERSON!” By “that person” I mean a Texan who claims Texas as their nation before America. Yes, Texas at one point was it’s own country (the stereotypical Texan through and through will never let you forget it and supposedly Texas can still secede BUT that is not my point) but it is not presently. It is a state that I claim before my nation.
How Texan of me.
I’d like to think that I am not the stereotyped Texan I wrote of before because I don’t own a cowboy hat. I have never owned a horse, gun or a confederate flag. My IQ is not low and I avoid the ignorant sounding twang like the plague but I feel the Texan in me by the aching of my heart when I think of the capital (our capital is larger than the one in Washington D.C. it is also made of pink limestone…aren’t we fancy), Tex-Mex (no you can’t get any good Tex-Mex north of Texas because then it wouldn’t be TEX-mex now would it), yellow roses (a sweet song sung all through grade school), blue bonnets (a customary backdrop for Texan family pictures) barbeque…oh, geeze how much I miss barbeque. I also feel the aching in my heart for “home” when I say, “we” as in “we” Texans.
The customary Texan spring photo backdrop complete with a barn amongst the bluebonnets. My little brothers and I were mere babies then.
My Paw-Paw (yes, even a southern sounding nickname for my grandfather to add to the Texan in me) is a World Barbecue Cook-off Champion. He is the coolest ol’ man you’ll ever meet and a born and bred Texan. He has given me some very high barbecue standards.
If my teenage self met me now she’d go ballistic. She’d cry for the European lost and the Texan found. She would be disappointed in how even half way across the world I feel my roots digging deep into Texas soil.
Oh, how I pity my sweet teenage self and her heartbreak. It truly would have been a crying shame for her to hear me say loud and proud now when asked by a Thai that I am from Texas before mentioning America. I think her ears might have dripped with blood from her brain combusting.
Ugh, listen to me now. Isn’t it ridiculous? How crazy to strive for something for ones entire life to find you are what you were running from. Here it is though…I am a Texan. Skin crawling as the teenage Beth would feel it is, it is what I am. I am Texan hear me say, “y’all.”
I am the “X” in “Texas.” Oh, how engrained in me being a Texan is it just took a while to realize it.