Understanding Texicans

WANA: We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

It occurred to me that my tweeps and fellow bloggers come from around the world. Naturally, you’ve all heard of Texas, but you may never have been here, and you may know nothing of our highly refined culture here. In the spirit of better understanding, I thought I’d include some vital information about Texas and Texans. Please try to maintain a spirit of reverence as you read this.

THINGS YOU WILL NEVER HEAR A TEXAN SAY:

12. Duct tape won’t fix that.

11. Come to think of it, I’ll have a Heineken.

10. No, we don’t keep firearms in this house.

9. No kids in the back of the pickup! It’s just not safe.

8. No thanks! We’re vegetarians.

7. I couldn’t find a single thing I liked at Wal-Mart today.

6. The tires on that truck are way too big.

5. I’ll have the arugula and radicchio salad.

4. Unsweetened tea just tastes better.

3. Would you like your fish poached or broiled?

2. Checkmate.

1. "Nope, no more for me. I’m drivin tonight."

A TEXAN’S GUIDE TO COMPUTERS:

“Hard drive” — Trying to climb a steep, muddy hill with 3 flat tires and pulling a trailer load of fertilizer.

“Keyboard” —- Place to hang your truck keys.

“Window” —— Place in the truck to hang your guns.

“Modem” ——- How you got rid of your dandelions.

“ROM” ——— Tasty when you mix it with Coca-Cola.

“Byte” ——– First word in a kiss-off phrase.

“Reboot” —— What you do when the first pair gets covered with barnyard stuff.

“Mouse” ——- Fuzzy, soft thing you stuff in your beer bottle in order to get a free case.

“LAN” ——– To borrow as in, “Hey Delbert! LAN me yore truck.”

“Bit” ——— A wager as in, “I bit you can’t spit that watermelon seed acrost the porch longways.”

TEXAS MEDICAL TERMS

Benign – What you be, after you be eight.
Artery – The study of paintings
Bacteria – Back door to cafeteria
Barium – what doctors do when patients die
Cesarean section – a neighborhood in Rome
Cat scan – searching for kitty
Cauterize – made eye contact with her
Colic – a sheep dog
coma- a punctuation mark
Dilate – to live long
Enema – Not a friend
Fester – quicker than someone else
Fibula – a small lie
GI series – world series of military baseball
Hangnail – what you hang your coat on
Labor pain – getting hurt at work
medical staff – a doctor’s cane
Morbid – a higher offer
Nitrates – cheaper than day rates
Node – I knew it
Outpatient – a person who has fainted
Pelvis – second cousin to Elvis
Post Operative – a letter carrier
Recovery room – place to do upholstery
Rectum – darn near killed him
Secretion – hiding something
Seizure – a Roman emperor
Tablet – a small table
Terminal Illness – getting sick at the airport
Tumor – one plus one more
Urine – opposite of you’re out
Varicose – nearby

I hope I’ve enlightened all of you today who are not fortunate enough to live in the Republic of Texas and maybe contributed a bit to international understanding in the process. Please don’t all rush at once to try to move here. Our highways are always overcrowded this time of year with Yankees heading home after spending the winter in the Rio Grande Valley and Padre Island.

Might be safer to wait until May. Of course, in May everybody’s planting cotton, and you might come up behind a tractor moving from one field to another at five or six miles per hour.

 

David N. Walker is a Christian father and grandfather, a grounded pilot and a near-scratch golfer who had to give up the game because of shoulder problems. A graduate of Duke University, he spent 42 years as a health insurance agent. Most of that career was spent in Texas, but for a few years he traveled many other states. He started writing about 20 years ago, and has six unpublished novels to use as primers on how NOT to write fiction. Since his retirement from insurance a few years ago, he has devoted his time to helping Kristen Lamb start Warrior Writers’ Boot Camp and trying to learn to write a successful novel himself.