Guaranteed to alienate all Cherokees and rape victims!
Spring sprang here this weekend, and it was about damn time. It wasn’t until I had a real winter that I realized I craved spring, because spring in Oklahoma always just seemed like a pollen-filled pause before the inevitable five-month-long summer of oppression and death. However, I realized this weekend that spring isn’t really going to be spring to me without the thunderstorms and tornado warnings of my alma mater. Warm breezes and green grass are nice and all, but spring seems sort of defanged unless there’s the constant chance that the sky is going to turn yellow and you’ll have to go hide in the closet with the radio. A good Oklahoma thunderstorm is like a cold stiff drink, only everything smells better afterwards.
Before anyone jumps all over for me for complaining about my new home and pining for my old one, let me clarify: I love New York, and I’m not pining for Oklahoma necessarily, just its ions. Here’s a good reason why: Oklahoma is building a 17-story bronze statue of an American Indian with an eagle on its shoulder. It will be taller than the Statue of Liberty. Let me put that in all caps for you, just to drive it home: 17-STORY BRONZE STATUE OF AN AMERICAN INDIAN WITH AN EAGLE ON ITS SHOULDER, TALLER THAN THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. The good people of Oklahoma rejected it twice already, once as an offer to put it atop the capitol dome, but now it's being done with private funds. The only way I would be in support of this monstrosity is if it produced giant saltwater tears and they put it by the highway.
Seriously, I grew up in Oklahoma, and I have love for my heritage, but in the same way you have love for a sweet but loserish family member. You can make fun of it, but you have to stand up for it if anyone else does. It’s sort of a depressing state history, all Trail of Tears and stealing land, and then, when it became government-sanctioned to take the land, some douchebags even stole it again, and we apparently thought that move was cute enough to nickname ourselves after it. All you hear about while growing up in Oklahoma is our sad land-stealing tear-trailing past, and it makes you cry when you learn it in elementary school, but then the weird part is that everyone sort of twists it into our badge of honor, like the kitschification of America after September 11, as if crying eagle statues are going to be something awesome to rally around. Oklahoma is always eager to drag out its past and slap it on a building or something, like that girl you secretly dreaded talking to in college because she got raped first semester freshman year and would never shut up about it, ever, not even four years later when you tried to make small talk at a party and she was all “blah blah when I volunteered for Call Rape” and you wanted to scream OH MY GOD I AM SO SORRY THAT HAPPENED TO YOU BUT COULD YOU PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT GETTING RAPED LONG ENOUGH FOR SOMEONE TO BE NICE TO YOU?
Do you hate me now? Awesome. All this would be cured if I could just have a good tornado warning. Stupid pussy New York spring. I need a drink.