Written
01 Feb 2013 (never published)
As someone who has traveled extensively, I always wonder what people in other parts of the country think when they meet me, a country boy from Oklahoma. As someone who has now lived in seven states, it is interesting how every state is different and how people from one state view people from other states, mostly stereotypically. When I mentioned to people back in Oklahoma that I was moving to Detroit, the reaction was strongly negative. After all, Detroit is a crime-filled mess, where people get into gunfights on the streets and you better be packing heat—or else! They were going to pray for my unfortunately soul when I inevitably wound up dead and will “tsk, tsk” over my casket because they had told me that this was going to happen, that I was going to die, and yet I still insisted on moving to Detroit. Whenever any of my fellow Oklahomans would give me the speil on how bad Detroit is, I would ask them if they had ever been there. Of course they hadn’t; why would they ever go to such a bad place? Most Oklahomans I know have never left the state of Oklahoma, and have no desire to, for, in their opinion, Oklahoma is paradise! Paradise is a state where they cancel college classes for a football game, where the famous people star in a reality show about catching catfish by shoving an arm down the fish’s mouth, where the largest city’s claim to fame is having a building blown up by a nutjob.
Let me digress about myself a little bit. I am not really a country boy from Oklahoma; I just lived in a small city in Oklahoma. By Oklahoma standards, Bartlesville, population 35,000, is a CITY; by everyone else’s standards, it is merely a large country town. I actually spent the first 22 years of my life in Saint Louis, so moving back to a large metropolitan area after ten years in the hinterland of Oklahoma is like a homecoming of sorts. Sure, big cities can be scary and intimidating, especially at night, but then again there are parts of rurral Oklahoma that you do not visit at night unless you want to be shot. The difference between being shot in the city and in the country is that, in the city, you know that someone will find your body before it becomes a mere pile of bones that has been picked cleaned by vultures, coyotes, and other wildlife. I know that if I die in Detroit, at least my wife and kids will know that I am dead, and not think I was kidnapped or lost and will have closure and move on with their lives.
One of the first places I visited when we finally arrived in Michigan was the local Walmart. Whether you like Walmart or hate it, Walmart is a way of life for Oklahomans, because Walmart is pretty much the only game in town in most Oklahoma communities. In Bartlesville, the local Walmart was the only place open after 11 PM, save the nearby tribal casinos and the local lodging. The problem with the Bartlesville Walmart at night is it was infested with “pajama people” – people walking around in their pajamas and slippers. The typical pajama person in the Bartlesville Walmart was a Kansan - grossly obese, heavily tattoed and pierced smokers missing half of their teeth. (Bartlesville is close to the Kansas border; thus the influx of Kansans!) The teenaged pajama people typically had a child or two hanging off their hips, as to be over the age of sixteen and not have a child means that obviously there is something wrong with you. I don’t want you to think that there weren’t Oklahoma pajama people- there were plenty of those, except the Oklahomans tended to frequent Walmart in the day rahter than at night, and, more importantly, were superior to the Kansans because the Sooners and Cowboys stomped the Jayhawks every year in football, and superiority is depended on the superiority of your football team.
The thing that I noticed about my Michigan Walmart was the complete dearth of pajama people. I looked everywhere and couldn’t find them. One of the Walmart associates asked me if I needed help finding anything, and, much to my daughter’s amusement and embarrassment, I asked the associate where the pajama people were, and was met with a very puzzled look. I explained that I had just moved to Michigan from Oklahoma, and that our Walmart back in Bartlesville was infested with pajama people, and I hadn’t seen any pajama people in Michigan and it made me a bit out of sorts. The associate kindly showed me the sections of the store where they might be, I thanked her, and with my daughter now fully amused, went out on my quest for the pajama people.
I spent the better part of an hour walking around Walmart looking for the pajama people, and my quest was for naught; I didn’t find a one. Disheartened, I took my handful of items, and proceeded to check out. The cashier asked if I had found everything all right, and I told him I hadn’t; I hadn’t found any pajama people. He pointed out the Michiganders like to wear camo, and wondered if that would be the equivalent. No, because in Oklahoma the pajama people wear camo pajamas! I paid for my purchase and left, disheartened because I didn’t find the pajama people.
There is hope, however. In the week since, of the scores of people I have seen on campus, in businesses, and on the city streets, I have now seen two pajama people. A little piece of Oklahoma paradise right here in Michigan!
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