When a Southern Belle Meets the 'Burgh

The majority of my life was spent as a southerner. With the exception of a two-year stint in Wisconsin before I was even four, I spent the rest of my life up to the age of 20 in Texas. 110-degree summers, cold fronts when the weather dropped to the 60s, and sky that went forever was my beautiful world as I knew it. One humid, muggy fall day, I got bored with it.

I moved to Pennsylvania in 2004. My reasons were petty to some, but I wanted to see what fall was really like. Falling leaves and crisp air... It was a phenomenon I'd often read about and seen on tv, but I'd never personally experienced. It wasn't more than 24 hours after I'd crossed the time zone completely that I realized just how many misconceptions there are of Texas. If you were to ask the rest of the world, if you didn't know better you'd believe that Texas is nothing but dirt roads, scattered tumbleweeds, rebellious cowboys at saloons and rodeos, electric chairs, and cows that freely roam the interstates. Some people might even suggest that armadillos are every high school's mascot. It's funny, to an extent. But I take pride in my southern roots, and I'd like to set a few things straight.

The week I moved to Pennsylvania, I had a conversation with a young man in an elevator. We exchanged our life stories in a nutshell on the way from the first to ninth floor, and upon learning I was from Texas, he actually said: "You're awfully white to be from Texas." I said to him, "Yes, well, my sombrero kept me pretty shaded from the sun." I was shocked at the seriousness with which he made that statement. In Texas, it's hot. But we don't live in cow pastures in the heat of the summer.