Dirt of a different color

Where are you from?

Seems like a simple enough question, yes? It is one I get asked constantly. I can only assume that is because I don't sound like most of the people I talk to on a daily basis.

I don't sound like the Okies I live near, and I don't sound like the Texans I work with. A "y'all" is about as likely to come out of my mouth as the sentence "Why yes Trent, you were right". I have been known to throw a "you betcha" into a conversation, then we are off to the races with the 20 questions ... "Have you ever seen the movie Fargo?" As a matter of fact I have not. I chose to organize a file cabinet half way through that movie instead of finishing it because I could hear my brain cells dying with every minute that went by watching it. I hear I missed a good scene in a wood chopper, but I digress.

So where am I from?

Last month marked my 7 year anniversary of living in Oklahoma. I don't know how that even happened, as it seems like just yesterday I just loaded the U-haul, put Kami behind the wheel (you didn't seriously think I could drive that thing 800 miles, did you?) and headed south. I honestly never thought I would stay here, it was an escape in the middle of a crisis, and the weather was better. 7 years later, here I am.

7 years is the same amount of time I lived in Eden Prairie. 7 years is the same amount of time I lived in Fargo. 7 years is 3 years longer than I lived in Minot. Aside from Wilton, Oklahoma is where I have lived the longest.

When I first moved to Oklahoma and people would ask, I would say I was from Minnesota. I suppose that was because that is where I just moved from, and in my brain Minnesota was more glamorous and less likely to elicit a smart ass comment than North Dakota. Because what these toothless. tornado watching, rough-necks in Oklahoma think of my residential history is somehow important to me ...

So while not especially glamorous, I am from North Dakota.

But where in North Dakota? I went to college in Fargo. I graduated High School from Minot. I lived in Wilton for 14 years. I am a North Dakota nomad. It is not a simple enough question, because life isn't that simple, y'all.

So where do I live? I live in Oklahoma. I live where the dirt is red. But where am I from? I am from a distant land - a far away place - where the air is pure, the people are good, and the dirt is black.