I just got back from a few days visiting New York where at every opportunity, people pointed out how inadequate I now am as a New Yorker. Evidently, I no longer walk fast enough, I suck at jaywalking, I’m woefully uniformed about restaurants on the Upper West Side and I have done a bad job keeping up with changes in the city. “What UNIVERSE do you live in?” someone snipped, when I wondered about a business that has been gone at least a decade.

I don’t live in a different universe, I live in a different state. Excuuuuuuuuuuuse me.

I was supposed to feel ashamed of my shortcomings but screw it.

I often can’t get a word in edgewise around New Yorkers, either. I’ve got that whole Southern thing going on of waiting my turn to speak and sometimes found myself waiting for turns that never came. I just smile like a nice Southern lady and let people talk.

I’m trying to decide if I feel bad about all this or not. In the big picture, being able to step into Broadway against the light when a van is hurtling towards me at 50 mph is not a terribly important skill. It’s not even a skill, it’s cojones. I got your cojones, only they’re put to different uses these days. I can drive on Texas highways, for example.

What other skills have I developed in my years in Texas? I can chitchat about the weather. I can recognize the difference between real and phony friendliness. I can eat spicy food at any time of the day or night and identify any number of different peppers. I can speak entire sentences—paragraphs, even—without saying “fuck.” I rarely choose to, but can if I must.

Oh, yeah, only marginally related, but this reminds me of an incident last week, when Jack and I had a mix-up with three loose dogs on our walk. One was a big, muscular, scary bull terrier that ran across a street at us with a little black-and-white doggie buddy and his owner, a Hispanic teen boy, in hot pursuit. The third dog was trotting up to us from a different direction and managed to back away from the fracas that ensued when the two other dogs approached, despite Jack’s growling and lunging.

Jack got hold of the little black-and-white dog and shook it up real good to show the bull terrier how badass he is. Seemed to work and good thing—if Jack and the bull terrier had gotten into it, there would have been nothing anyone could do. The bull terrier stayed back, though (I also used my ultrasound zapper on him and that helped), Jack let the little dog go and we were able to move along,. But it was one scary clusterfuck, with both me and the teenager tugging at Jack’s leash to try to get him to drop the pup. (I really didn’t need the boy’s help, he should have been dealing with his bull terrier.)

At any rate, I did have a great deal of fun of yelling, "GET THIS FUCKING DOG OUTTA HERE!" at the top of my lungs on a Dallas street. And I do believe Jack and I have clinched our reputation in this neighborhood. Don’t fuck with either of us. I may suck at jaywalking but I can still cuss like a Yankee.

Labels: dogs, new york city, texas, travel