Captain’s Logos

So here’s a fun fact.

Did you know that if Alaska were to be cut in half, it would make Texas the third largest state?

Well I did. Because my girlfriend happens to be from Alaska, and apparently most Alaskans are very cognizant of the geographical implications inferred by dissecting their beloved frontier-land into more manageable chunks (what else do you do when it’s -50 degrees for 3 months straight? How many times could you slice it to have every parcel look exactly like a Mr. Planter’s peanut man, top hat and all? These are the issues!). So when this glorious schism takes place, Old Alaska would remain the largest, and the newer, more improved Alaska, which suddenly received state annexation despite its secession, would rank second. The end result of this imaginary process is that every time I talk to someone from her family they will invariably say to me, “So how are things in the third largest state?” (upturned noses and country club guffawing aside).

“Well, they are good,” I reply, and leave it at that. Because they are good, and even if they weren’t I wouldn’t admit it thereby lending even more credence to their hinting at our inferiority.

But what I’m thinking on the inside is, “You think you're special permafrost brain? Just because your stupid territory happens to be one of the largest land masses in the world outside of Siberia, which furthermore was all but barren and deserted except for various indigenous natives until along came William Seward, who against all conventional wisdom purchased this wasteland from Russia in 1867, and then America annexed it in 1959 so as to create a military buffer zone between US and then arch-enemy soviet Russia coupled with the fact that oil was discovered off the Kenai peninsula, you think you’re sooooo special. WELL YOU’RE NOT!”

Sometimes my mind harps on the historical.

Do I have a point here? Not really, except for the fact that we Texans don’t even like our State being called the second largest, much less the third. Truth is we were the absolute largest until these jonny-come-latelys sashayed into the mix. To me Texas is like Hank Aaron and Alaska is like Barry Bonds, and 500 years from now, when people are searching through the annuls of history looking to see what the largest state in the Union was, it will show Texas every year up until 1959, and then there will be Alaska, with a big asterisk next to it which would read:

*Although Alaska was technically the largest State in America there is growing evidence which suggests Alaska used performance enhancing techniques to obtain the record such as pretending icebergs were part of their land mass and coercing surveyors to lie about the acreage with false promises of igloo sex (which is sex in an igloo not with an igloo, which would almost certainly result in the comical Dumb & Dumber ‘frost’ dilemma, although not involving the tongue).

Or something like that.

So the next time someone says to me, “So how are things in the third biggest State?” (snicker snicker) I will say to them, “Well, they are good.”

But at least you know what I’ll be thinking.