city country.

so i got called city slicker again yesterday. i was snowshoeing. and i said the word 'meese'. yeah, i know it's moose singular, moose plural. but meese just sounds better. so much more cuddly! that's something i learned when i moved out west. meese are not gentle animals, but killer wildebeests with the thirst for human flesh. or at least that's what i gleaned from the wildlifers' nerd speak (no offense cbell!)


but still, i was snowshoeing. when do i shed my slicker skin? is it like the 'one drop' rule? once you've lived in a city, you can never be blue collar? i don't want to be pooled with the greenies or the greenies-by-proxy, californians. i am from the DMV, muhhfucka! where we call cigarettes jacks, and we dance to go-go. if you don't know who sean taylor is, you're excommunicated. educate yourself:

"even the mayor had a run-in with crack, but we all kept it real and voted him back."


i grew up on 16th&T, about 10 or so blocks from the white haus. i could see the monument from my bedroom window. if i wanted to, i could eat seven dinners within a 5 block radius of my house: italian, mexican, thai, cuban, ethiopian, creole, and mediterranean. and more. i never drove a car until i moved to maryland, and i probably walked 5 miles a day just hanging out with my friends in chinatown, silver spring, and georgetown. i knew which way was north was because 16th is N-S, not because we had some bullshit mountains on the horizon (i kid, i kid). you never ran into people you knew on the street; if you did, you had a stalker. as a senior, we had beach week after we graduated, where we all drank all night and slept all day in rented ocean city condos. as a teen, i got catcalled on a daily basis. not by the resident town drunk, but by assorted cohorts of men all over town. it wasn't a unique occurence, it was a way of life. there were streets you never walked down at night, and there were parks, restaurants, and concert venues that my friends and i called our homes. the center of american civilization was our back yard.


i can understand why some people think that you can never take the city out of someone, and i definitely see why. i drive like i'm from dc. don't use a turn signal? you get the horn. cut me off? you get the horn. going under the speed limit? you get the horn. i am loud, opinionated, and i curse like a sailor. i don't wear cowboy boots and plaid buttondowns every day, but does the average wyomingite? 


i think what people choose to ignore is that the wilderness changes you just as much. small towns are attractive in their own right; i like laramie summers where i run into someone i know every time i go downtown. i love that i can go hiking, nordic skiing, and snowshoeing just outside my town. and being able to drive to kickass places in montana? definitely a plus. but wyoming has definitely tempered me out a little. i listen more, talk less (if you can believe that), and have really enjoyed getting out of the political hotbed that is dc. (not that we don't have political craziness here in WY either...grumble grumble...)


so, call me a city slicker. but i bet that dc could kick the shit out of your country personality too.