Texas is a friendly place; it's known as The Friendship State, after all. There are a few things, however, that totally get our goats and if you're planning to have a civil conversation, you might want to leave out these 15 classic gaffes when talking to Texans.
15. So do you ride a horse to school?
Yes. This is 1875 and we all ride horses everywhere. You flew over freeways to get here on an airplane, but those are just for out-of-state guests.
14. Everyone here owns oil wells, right?
...and everyone in Florida owns orange groves, and everyone in Idaho is a potato farmer. Welcome to the United States of stereotypes.
13. I thought Texas was just a big desert.
No, Texas is not like that old Disney cartoon about Pecos Bill. There is a big swath of Texas that is desert, specifically, the part that touches New Mexico. The rest of Texas, however, encompasses rolling green hills, rivers, plains, pine forests, marshes and beaches. So pick an environment and come on down.
12. Doesn't everyone here, like, worship Rick Perry?
Definitely not. To each his own.
11. "Y'all" isn't proper grammar.
Sigh... Texans are so very sick of hearing complaints about "y'all". It's a contraction of "you all". Don't like it? Don't use it. The English language didn't have a plural form of "you", so Texas invented one. Y'all are welcome.
10. You should see winters in (fill in the name of your northern state).
Yes yes, I'm sure your acres of snow are very impressive and your Eskimo skills are unparalleled. And no, we don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with the two inches of snow we get once every other year; we're too busy lowering taxes and growing our economy.
9. Where's your cowboy hat?
It's not glued to my head. Sometimes I take it off. My boots are removable too.
8. Isn't everyone here racist?
Hmm. Making a blanket assumption about an entire group of people based solely on where they live... which one of us is really more ignorant?
7. How come you're not tan?
Yes, it's quite sunny here, but believe it or not, different people have different skin tones.
6. I like ketchup on my barbecue.
If you have ever uttered the above statement or a similar one, then you don't know what barbecue is.
5. The summers can't possibly get that hot.
Yeah, actually they do. In Texas, spontaneous combustion is actually a thing. The state record-holder for hottest temperature ever recorded is Seymour Texas, which registered 120 degrees in August of 1936. So we'll take your insane winters and blowtorch them.
4. I had Mexican food in a non-border state once.
Yeah, I don't think you did. Any place that pronounces the "j" in "jalapeño" doesn't make real Mexican food.
3. Texans are uncultured/uneducated.
Texas is home to the University of Texas, Texas A&M, Rice University and Baylor, among many others; and if you'd like a nice dose of culture, you can check out the symphony in Houston, or catch the Grammy winning choir Conspirare in Austin, or take in the many art museums in San Antonio, or attend the ballet in Dallas, just take your pick.
2. Texas really isn't that big.
Actually, it really is. It's over 800 miles from our easternmost city (Beaumont) to our westernmost city (El Paso). That means Beaumont is literally closer to Atlanta than it is to El Paso, by almost 100 miles. Coincidentally, the it's about the same distance from El Paso to Las Vegas. If you're traveling north and south, however, Brownsville is almost 100 miles closer to Mexico City than it is to Amarillo. George Strait wouldn't have made it to Amarillo by morning if he'd been traveling up from Brownsville.
1. Football is boring.
Yeah? What have you got that's better? That's what I thought. Sit down.
