Living in Texas changes you. If you come from another state, you’ll soon enough wonder why you ever thought paying a state income tax was no big deal (there’s no state income tax in Texas).
Read below for a few more things Texans know that residents of other states don’t.
- Texas is not all desert and chaparral. The Big Thicket National Preserve, as just one example, is located in Southwest Texas and is one of the most bio-diverse areas on the entire planet, except for the tropics. In fact, so diverse is the Big Thicket that it was named a national preserve in 1974 to protect the many animals and plants within it. Sometimes called the “American Ark,” the Big Thicket holds more than 100 species of trees and shrubs. According to the U.S. National Park Service, the area is home to more than 1,000 species of ferns and flowering plants.
- You know that everyone in the U.S. and even the world absolutely knows where Texas is. They may not be able to pick out Michigan from Minnesota, but even blindfolded everyone knows exactly where Texas is!
No matter where you live on Earth – England, Taiwan, Ethiopia, Kenya – you know what this is.
- You also know that everyone hates Texas (it’s too big, it’s too hot, it gets too many hurricanes, people talk funny and wear funny looking hats), but you don’t care.
- You used to think a cowboy hat looked silly with a business suit, but now you’ve rethought your position.
- Mr. Pibb can never be a substitute for Dr Pepper. You know better than to even try to go there.
- In fact, if you want a soda, you know you need to say you want a coke. You won’t get a Coca-Cola, necessarily, but you don’t call soda, soda. It’s coke. Even if it’s Pepsi or Sprite. Unless it’s Dr Pepper. Then you simply say, “I want a Dr Pepper.” (And no, that’s not a typo: there is no period after the Dr in Dr Pepper, you non-Texan, you.)
- Whataburger.
- It’s not the distance (as in miles) it’s the time. So it’s not “about 162 miles” from Houston to Austin, it’s three hours. (Unless you stop for a bit. Then it takes longer.)
- Finally: Blue Bell Ice Cream.
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