What I learned in 2nd grade…..
“Fifty-nifty United States from thirteen original
colonies. Shout ‘em, spout ‘em, tell all
about ‘em one by one till we’ve given a name to every state….. Alabama, Alaska,
Arizona..”
Ok, I’ll stop there.
You get the point. Some of you
were even singing the song along with me (and still are!). In 2nd grade I learned all 50
states in alphabetical order. I can
still say all 50 in alphabetical order today.
My teacher made each of us pick a state and do a “State Shoe Box”. We had to learn all about the state flag,
bird, motto etc. My state…. Texas. It was not hard to get Texas because in 2nd
grade I lived in Florida, so naturally all the kids wanted to do Florida. I was from Texas though, so I wanted to do Texas. Texas was my birth state, my home state, the
state my parents talked about, the only state my dad had ever lived up until
that point….. Texas.
Well, the class presented all their states and of course
many states were not chosen because there weren’t 50 of us in the class. So for the unlucky states not chosen, the
teacher would do short lessons on each.
When she got to Ohio, this is what she said (I still remember it to this
day!)… “Ohio. Round on the ends, “hi” in
the middle. That’s all you need to know
because none of you should ever move to Ohio.
Just trust me, don’t do it.”
Yep. That’s what she said. I have no idea why I remember that or why she
said that, she must have had some grudge against Ohio. But nonetheless, a few years later (after
moving to Louisiana for 2 years and then briefly back to Texas) my parents
announced we would be moving again.
Where you ask? You guessed it!
Ohio.
Thus my journey in Ohio began… the middle of my 7th
grade year. We arrived in the COLD. We had NEVER seen snow and enjoyed it at
first. My sister and I enjoyed the
sledding, but we did not shovel the driveway (that’s too COLD and not fun… we
paid a little neighbor boy down the street to once and a neighbor across the
street did it often for us, of course mom did it the most). Eventually, the cold wore on us… me
especially- coldness just hurts, physically!
So by the time I began looking for colleges I applied everywhere (South
Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Texas)… notice a trend?… yep, warm places. Not cold, not Ohio. Everyone thought I was crazy for trying to
get in someplace out of state, but my parents didn’t care, they didn’t like the
cold much better and didn’t plan to stay very long anyways. So, after many school visits and lots of thinking,
I chose Texas. Baylor to be exact. Yep, I did graduate from Texas A&M, I
would transfer over after my 1st year at Baylor, but that’s an
entirely different story.
So, there I was.
Young, 18, out of Ohio, ready to move forward to a life in Texas, nothing
holding me back. Well…. nothing except a
boy. A very nice boy. A boy I had been dating in high school. Yep, Matt.
It’s ok though, life was working out because he CHOSE to go down to Texas A&M and follow me! (I’ll have you
know, I tried to break it off because I felt bad he was following me all the
way down there, but he said no way and happily moved. As it turned out he had also applied to the
other schools I had applied to in case I didn’t choose Texas. How sweet J) Hooray!
I almost had another Texas convert J It would take about 5 years, but eventually
he also loved Texas as much as I did and we had decided (after 8 years there) to stay and live there
and raise our family there. We loved our
life.
All of that came to a drastic stop in March of 2011. The job he had didn’t work out. However, it didn’t just not work out… it came to a slamming halt. We both definitely feel that was God because
if it had been more subtle we probably wouldn’t have listened and would have
made a big mistake. And thus began our
new life… in… Kentucky.
