While I've now been back in Australia for almost a decade, I'm only now realising the extent to which my Texas-isms are surfacing.
When I lived in Dallas all those years ago, I was determined to keep the Australian in me even though I truthfully had no idea what it was.
It seems like only yesterday that I left that place. I can still remember where I lived, the long and wide Greenville Avenue and how crossing it in the summer meant certain death or a new cd at Blockbuster Music. I remember where the school bus stopped in Freshman year and how it meant walking back along the Tom Thumb Trail, a path alongside The Village apartments that let me bypass everything until I crossed Southwestern Boulevard back into the place we lived in.
Sammy, my beloved Cocker Spaniel, excited as always and waiting to sniff me, lick me, and then molest me like any overly horny male dog in his prime would. I miss Sammy.
When I lived in Texas, I was proud of my "g'day" though truthfully it's a word I rarely use. Everyone would use the word "ya'll", another contraction that I wasn't sure about so never used it. It was decidedly Texan and that wasn't me at the time.
So the first time I stepped off of the plane back in Australia, can you guess what was in the smattering of first words?
Ya'll.
These days I've more or less come to accept that it doesn't matter what my vocabulary is. I use all sorts of words from all sorts of places. I literally follow a random habit of ways of saying hello using a combination of "howdy", "aloha", "hi", and "g'day".
It didn't take long to be back in Australia before a Texan accent I didn't even know I had to start asserting itself into my speech patterns. Now I alternate at random times. I can control it but choose not to.
And so I come to the latest Texan body part that's deciding to spring up on my body without even the faintest of warnings: cowboy boots.
A couple of months ago, I had a strange craving for cowboy boots. I wanted to wear them out with a ten gallon hat and put my thumbs into my pockets like all good cowboys do.
I was to be Shane. I was John Wayne. I was going to be that guy who rode out on the horse at the end of a gunfight only my horse would be a Sydney bus, about the same speed as a bus but easier to ride home drunk on.
And then I looked for boots. And looked and looked and found some but somehow couldn't justify over $300 for a pair of boots I'd never tried and would have to be purchased over the Internet.
Last weekend, however, fortune favoured the Freak as my Mum's boyfriend Brad dug through his closet and found a pair of cowboy boots he didn't want anymore so rather than throw them out, he gave them to me.
I've put in some new interior soles and I'm wearing them now. All I need now is a ten gallon hat. :P
*time passes…*
So now it's night. I left home at 7.30 this morning and as I sit in the bus home I see it's 8.24. Close enough to say 13 hours in these boots. These cowboy boots.
And I can tell you without a doubt that even with the inside soles replaced…
These boots aren't made for walking
They're not good walking shoes
One of these days these boots
Are gonna turn my feet to goo
Seriously, they may be Windsor Smith's, but they're definitely not made to walk all day at work as well as in and around town for dinner.
Mike (my brother in case you haven't been told yet) and I did what is becoming a somewhat regular practice of having dinner and looking around the city on Thursday nights. We headed to Market City and had some Asian food. He had a somewhat crap pork wonton laksa and I had a pointlessly mediocre beef wonton noodle soup.
Before it though, we looked at shoes. I saw some hot leather Converse rip-off's by Onitsu-however-the-fuck you say it (Tiger) for 80 bucks which are tempting to go and try on, to say the least. Mike saw a brand he likes the look of called Macbeth.
We went into a Glue store at one point though and got to see a a grade A example of bad employees. I walked in with my brother and the two shop people were standing by the counter (one behind, one in front) chatting amongst themselves. I started to look at some of the shoes in boxes without realising that my slingbag had knocked a box or two aside stacked in some sort of a formation on the floor. That brought one of the girls out of her retail coma to walk past me, kneel down and say "aww you're ruining everything".
Yeah. Great fucking manners. That's going to help get me buying shoes. I'm sorry I ruined your great boxed art sitting on the floor that no one notices in the first place.
Do you sell products by commenting on how cheap the customer looks too? Great quality service you've got there, Glue. Real stunner. She may actually have worse social skills than me and that's just fucking awful.
It's now 8.43 and the bus is almost home. Blogging on my phone keeps me awake and in a few minutes I can look forward to getting my shoes off and just relaxing. Seeing the damage these boots have done. I'll take relaxing.
In 11 hours I have to do it all again.
I think I'll just where my Cons tomorrow.