10 reasons why so many people are moving to Texas

[MrScorpio]

347. I'm not going to expound...

On what happens when someone's own personal experience is treated with a dismissive tone. That's just the kind of stuff that happens on the Net all of the time.

And yes, I did admit to my mistake of not referring to Texas as a southwest state, versus a strictly southern one.

However, I do assure you that my attitude about the state was something that did not come with me when I went there, but was something that developed during my stay there. I went there with a keen sense of interest in a new place, curiosity and an open mind.

And as I said, I found quite a few things that I enjoyed there... Only to counter-balanced by those experiences WITH Texans.

For one, I quickly found out that practically every native Texan I met believed that ANY place that wasn't Texas just WASN'T AS GOOD AS Texas. I was in a "paradise" and I should enjoy the privilege. (I didn't know that "paradise" was three steps away from Hell during any Summer day and chock full of fire ants.) Also, while IN Texas, places OUTSIDE of Texas technically DIDN'T exist. Or that Texas, all by itself was believed to be self-sustaining by the Texan natives.

I really tried to make friends there. But an interesting development happened... It turned out that every single "Texan" friend in town that I made turned out to be a transplant from somewhere else: New York, Chicago, Montgomery, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida, Brazil... Anywhere but Texas. The friends that I made off-base were very close ones, yet with them I discovered that the only level of welcome that non-Texas residents could ever achieve there was merely a mild degree of tolerance. And that was allowed, only if, they diminished their own degree of non-Texaness, to be supplanted by an adopted Texas-like persona.

During my interaction with my friends, I also found out that own experience wasn't solitary one. I had an on-base buddy, the Okie, who pretty much helped me figure out what the freaking problem was. One night he came back to base, exasperated that he was treated like crap in town that night. There were a bunch of us in the Day Room on a Saturday night (which should have been a clue about why a group of healthy, young GIs would rather spend time on base than going out on the town that night), my friend was upset because he was treated like crap, Okie accent at all... (I thought that my problem up to that point was that I didn't SOUND like I was from the place).

When my Okie friend relayed his experience, every single other guy in that day room (there were roughly twenty other guys) voiced an agreement. I realized that the problem wasn't me that night, the problem was this place we were all in. The problem is that Austin really didn't like GIs, especially GIs from any place OTHER than Texas. All of my Texas GI friends were in love with the place and vice versus, however my non-Texas friends couldn't wait to leave and were treated as if they weren't supposed to be there.

Given that, I failed to understand HOW I would EVER be happy in such a place.

So, after two years I left for good and went to Korea, then to other parts of the world after that.

In ALL of my subsequent travels, my Texas experience was never duplicated in any way. All throughout Asia, Europe, every other state that I've ever visited and lived, I was welcomed as a stranger, a friend, even a family member.

And not ONCE was I ever made to feel unwelcome because I wasn't from THAT particular place.

So, you made say that I have a "chip" on my shoulder... But the fact is that wasn't the one who placed it there.