Don't mess with Texans

Hi, my name is Whitney and I'm a... Texan. "Welcome, Whitney," they say as I pick up my two-year chip.

That is not all, I continue. I'm one of... those. [A collective gasp and clucking of cheeks from the crowd]. Yes, I had never flown a Texan flag, purposefully drawled "y'all" or owned more than a grand total of one pair of cowboys boots before I got to college--I bought more pairs of red stilettos last season, for God's sake. Yet, I get here, buy a cowboy hat, blast Tim McGraw and begin to reminisce incessantly of the summer I was forced to ride horses at camp. [They are shaking their heads; they know my type.] I did stop short, though, of hanging a huge Texas flag over my bed, the cowgirl variation of mirror-on-the-ceiling.

Sometimes being a dislocated Texan requires an imaginary support group. I fill mine with people from New Jersey who act like they are from Philly and people from Ohio who have no cool place within 200 miles to pretend like they are from. These people benefit most from those who actually seem to like where they are from. Texans are renowned for state pride as big as a Fort Worth society woman's hair. Simply saying you are from Texas evokes "understanding" from people--well, that or "maybe if I nod and look impressed, I will be spared the Dubya-is-God speech." Regardless, we Texans feel a moral obligation to uphold these expectations. This hits at the very root of the Texas pride epidemic.

I am betraying a sacred secret in revealing this ugly truth. No one wants to admit that the cool club we are part of would not be that much more exciting than the Maryland club. But it is time the truth came out. Texas pride is something largely unique to Texans who have left Texas. In Texas itself, few people go around flying flags, saying "damn Yankees" or doing half the other asinine things that we all so proudly do here. The problem is this: The outside world anticipates that you will be very Texan--they want this, maybe even need it, the same way George Dubya needs Osama to be evil, plain and simple. And Texans, being the good Southern Baptists that we are, want to help you.

When I got to Duke, I did my part. I did my best Tammy Fae Baker voice, blew out my salon-blond hair daily and said Texas with a flash of pearly teeth as if it was some sort of shocking conversation-stopper every time someone asked where I was from. I was like a Southern, female Jim Carrey. At home, on the other hand, I bitched that the guys I dated used dip (one thing that thankfully does not mosey north of Lubbock), complained when I had to leap into pick-up trucks towering five feet above the ground, and generally saved country music stations as the last resort button on the radio. A friend from home who came to Duke this year serves as a better example than I do. Let's call him el Tejano Falso to protect his reputation. At Duke, he has longhorns connected to his loft, an old Texas flag framed over his bed, always wears boots and drives a pickup truck that could swallow several lacrosse players. Yet in high school, el Falso did manly Texan things like wear Liz Claiborne suits to school daily and drive a tiny red Datson that his head stuck out of like a caricature.

Loyalists of the Texans at Duke club seem to be suffering from these same self-delusions. I cannot imagine that the girl who wore the shirt made of a Texas flag at the first meeting would possibly show her face in that at home. Forging a bond with people to whom you would never talk if you did not live in the same 30,000 square-foot state is more nauseating than consuming a full 'Dillo meal. It would be one thing if the club involved shared interests like hosting a Willie Nelson concert or attending the Duke v. University of Texas games. But it is entirely another when the club's focus is to show that Texans do things people from Vermont don't.

Not that this is altogether bad. For the rest of my life, I will have a stock cocktail conversation that must beat, "Yes, Wisconsin makes a great cheese, you know." The only thing actually separating Texans from those who do not live in a state that repeatedly declares its independence is the perception that we are different. But, as my U.S. History teacher Mr. Boggs used to say, perception is more important than reality. Of course, he also said that Jimmy Carter had a remarkable presidency.

The only truly Texan Texans either are from an older generation, when scars of the Civil War were fresher and less Floridians migrated there each year, or from small towns in east or west Texas. My mom, for example, grew up in Waco as the daughter of "the hanging judge," competed in rodeos on the weekends and was crowned Miss Texas Young Republican in a beauty contest. Yes, I'm related to this. Once upon a time she was Texan. She is what we all pretend to be when we hang Texas flags.