Yellow Dog in a Red State

I need to make a list entitled “Things I Believe in My Heart to Be True.” Number one on this list would be: God has a sense of humor. And not some average, ordinary sense of humor, but a sitting up in Heaven, belly laughing his head off sense of humor. This must be true. There can be no other explanation for the fact that I was born and still live in Texas (the granddaddy of all red states), and I am and forever will be a Democrat. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of good things about Texas. I hate to be cold and there is very little of that here. As I write this in November, it is eighty-one degrees outside. I also think had I not been born and raised in Texas, I could have never have known how much I despise certain things that there are quite a lot of here. There is a Kenny Chesney song that says, “I am what I am and I’m not what I’m not.” I love that … because what you’re not is sometimes way more important than what you are. And I am not a Republican.

Number two on my “Things I Believe in My Heart to Be True” list would be: God puts things where he knows we’ll eventually find them. My granddaddy used to say our family were “Yellow Dog Democrats.” So guess what was waiting for me the day last January I finally broke down and took my family to the SPCA to “just look and see if they have a dog we like?” Yep, you got it. A seventy pound yellow lab. Ten months later my family is still wondering how it was that we went to the SPCA to get them a dog and I was the only one that ended up with one. Don’t get me wrong, they love the dog too. But one yellow dog can spot another yellow dog and this dog and I have a connection. Which loops back to what I was saying about God having a sense of humor. My friends are having a hard time adjusting to my becoming a dog person. They view this as some sort of miracle. Which of course, it is. I mean do you know the odds of walking into the SPCA on a Sunday afternoon and finding a two year old, full blooded yellow lab that is housebroken and well socialized? About the same as me becoming a dog person or finding a real Democrat in Texas.