Texas - You Can't Have It!

We had dinner last night with our friend who devoted months of his life a decade and a half ago to balancing a career he was called to and a passion he could not resist. The first was a job with the State of Texas, the second - everything Alamo. The San Antonio native let his facial hair go wild, his boots go muddy, and his family go husbandless/fatherless during weekends and evenings, all to play the role of Extra #57 in the 2004 movie you've probably seen at least once - The Alamo. It was something from his bucket list. 

Friends - you have now met a true Texan. He is not a crazy person.

We have other people in our lives who used to send "Happy Early Texas Secession Day" greetings to everyone in their address book during the holidays instead of Christmas cards. You know - in case we forgot our streaks of We're-Biggest-and-Best Texan thinking. They are not stupid people.

Our favorite native Texas singer-songwriter has a tattoo on his leg - an outline (nothing more needed) of Texas. He is not a nut-job.

Not to go unmentioned, of course, is the fact that I have two sons - one named for the Father of Texas, one named for a 26-year old lieutenant in the Texas army who died at the aforementioned Alamo. 

When my Father of Texas son married a New Jersey girl (what?) at a ceremony in (gulp!) Indiana not quite a decade ago - well, it was a given that I'd be wearing cowboy boots to complement my Mother of the Groom dress. 

On my first trip outside the United States, it took me a while to understand that people asking me where I was from were looking for "USA" not "Texas"... 

We Texans are just like this - proud, arrogant, and - well - apparently undeterred by reality. This last assumption comes to you courtesy Texas headline-makers. So, on behalf of a large percentage of 30-million people, may I say we once-proud Texans are tired of looking crazy/stupid/nut-jobby.

Texas Independence Day came and went this week with no clinking glasses of Llano Estacado or Garrison Brothers. In fact, the words "Texas independence" in the wake of our obviously foolhardy independent utility grid, really stuck in the throat. 

We haven't felt this stupid since we gave the world Dubya. 

In hindsight, I'd take one or two more like the affable, Miss-Me-Yet? George W. Bush. Preferably in exchange for a Louie Gohmert, Ken Paxton, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry. Or for the latest Texas spotlight seeker - Governor Greg pleasegivemeyourtrumpvotes Abbott.

If you're a thinking person in Texas right now, your wince-face is probably tired. Like me, I'm guessing it's been painful to try to defend everyone else in the state from the trending goofballs on Twitter:

Masks do NOT give you Covid-19, Rep. Gohmert. 

"Lots of grandparents" will NOT give their lives to save the economy, AG Paxton. Oh, and let Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (any other state not yours) take care of their own business from now on. 

First class tickets to Cancun are not within reach of steel workers, construction workers, pipeline workers, police officers, firefighters, waiters and waitresses, Senator Cruz. 

And no. Texans would NOT go without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of our business, former Governor/US Energy Secretary Perry.

And - damnit Greg Abbott - we do NOT want people to take off masks and get back to feeding us our favorite food/pouring our favorite drinks/teaching our children/cavalierly filling our public spaces right now. We want vaccinations so we emerge from this pandemic, not the kind of stupidity that has us leading the 4th pandemic wave.

We also think you're despicable for blaming the spread of Covid in Texas on immigrants. Especially after showing the country what an irresponsible leader you actually are.  

And today you're out and about touting a bill introduced in the Texas Senate that would end "a dangerous movement" to "silence conservative ideas and religious beliefs" on social media. In other words, per you, let's be on with the business of spreading specious lies that might keep people like you in charge.  

Ugh.

Shut up, please. All of you. Stop humiliating us. Where's a woman with cowboy boots in her closet, sons named after Texas heroes, and a BFF with a tattoo of the state on his leg supposed to go? 

 Remember this? I know you and your conservative friends tweeting nonesense with abandon think you own it, but you don't. I speak for many Texans. We vote. We aim to let you know you can't have our state as soon as we can. 

In the meantime, I'd really like to put a single + digit inside this outline of Texas. Soon.