I’ve been a proud resident of the Lone Star State for nearly a dozen years. CarolAnn and I love it here. Most of all we love the people, the lifelong Texans who grew up with a neighborly live-and-let-live attitude. Unfailingly polite and respectful, always smiling, they’ll invite you to supper and let you bunk down on the sofa before you’ve swapped names.
Texans are a prideful bunch and rightly so. They’ll tip their hat to you as they hold open a door. (Everybody here holds open doors for everybody else.) Kids still call grownups sir and ma’am. Store clerks will joke with you. Strangers smile and wave as they pass.
But…
(You knew that was coming, didn’t you?)
When Texans get behind the wheel of their cars and pickups they’re fixin’ to dance with the devil.
Texas drivers are the most aggressive I’ve ever known. Not all, of course, but enough that it makes an impression worthy of stereotyping.
Here’s just one example: This morning CarolAnn phoned me (hands free, of course) while on her way to work to tell me about a driver who got so pissed off at having to slow down for her in the morning commute traffic that she passed my wife in the suicide (center turn) lane, lurched into CarolAnn’s lane and slammed on the brakes, intentionally inviting an accident. When the accident didn’t happen the angry woman slowed to a crawl and turned on her emergency flashers.
We see this kind of thing more frequently as time goes on. And, as more Californians are transplanted here. Just sayin’…
Still, it could have been a Texan, who knows?
Big-city Texans honk their horns incessantly. If you’re at the front of a line of vehicles stopped at a light the person behind you will honk like crazy when the light turns green before you can move your foot from the brake to the gas.
And yet…
In Texas, you rarely hear about road rage shootings or fights. They don’t want to kill or pummel you, they just want you to move your ass.
Everything I’ve just said is observational. My conclusions are just mine but here’s what I think:
Texans aren’t rude and aggressive by nature, quite the opposite. But they are fiercely independent which they expect of you as well.
“I got places to go and no time for lolly-gaggin’. Step on it or get out of the way.”
These are the same people, by the way, who will stop and change a tire for you. I’ve had that happen twice.
When I had only been in Dallas for a couple of weeks I was getting my hair cut by a sweet young woman with a lovely Texas drawl. I was telling her how nice people are, so friendly and cheerful. She gave me a double-wide country grin and said, “That’s true!…”
“…We’ll give y’all a hot meal and a warm bed if you need it. But if you step off that curb while I’m drivin’, I WILL run you over!”
We both laughed about that.
She meant it.