Not Our Peeps

When we were in Texas for the eclipse three months ago, all twelve of us trooped in to explore a huge convenience-type store along the freeway. Kind of like a Luv’s times fifty. One the members of the fam had seen it online when she was researching our North Texas trip and thought it looked like an interesting place to stop and it was, as it happened, located between our hotel and someplace else we were going. So we went into Buc-ee’s. Buc-ee is an apparently extremely happy rodent of some sort with a big toothy grin, an amiable enough looking character on a big sign that beckoned us to come on in and bring our wallets. Holy cow, I wasn’t prepared for the amount of stuff for sale, from clothes imprinted with the store’s logo to beef jerky to an onsite bakery, as well as a variety of things I’d see at a regular but much smaller highway travel center. We saw a plethora of people in cowboy hats and accompanying western attire roaming the aisles. Different accents, attitudes, clothes. Definitely not of the type we were used to running into in the Pacific Northwest. One of my granddaughters whispered in my ear, “Oma, I don’t think these are our peeps.” I didn’t think so either but we realized it was a polarizing attitude to have so we talked about the two of us working on acceptance. Even when someone appears to be or to think differently than we do, we decided to put our best “Hiya!” and “Howdy” faces forward. We were in Texas and after all, we have to live together in the world. We felt better but were more than a little anxious to get out of that crazy center of crass commercialism. However, we weren’t so high falutin’ as not to recognize quality baked goods when we saw them, and before leaving we splurged on a deliciously large cinnamon roll to split. And when we were back in Seattle, she confessed, “I wish I’d bought some of those pajamas with the Buc-ees logo.They were actually pretty cute.”

Photo courtesy RJA1988 on Pixabay.com