A little touchy about Arkansas

I have realized that even though I have left Arkansas, and probably plan on leaving Arkansas to live somewhere else after Law, I am incredibly defensive about it as my home. This is not a new tendency for me, I think I have always been like that, I just think I am not starting to come to terms with it. I remember back in August of 1999 when I was at music camp for Harding. Back then there was daily kitchen duty and certain people each day would go around getting people refills and the like. There was a girl named Rachel Cooper from New Jersey who came to our table, a very cute girl, so being the flirt that I am I paid attention. She was talking to the person across the table from me (Jeff this might have been you, I can't remember, I know we met at this music camp, and hung out at it a lot. It was either you or Adam Sullivan) and she said "I can't believe I ended up in Arkansas, I hate it here, it such a backwards pitiful state." I was infuriated, although I didn't really show anger. I politely told her that this was my home and that she was welcome to leave at any time. But I was really seething on the inside. I think at that point was the first time in my life that I had seen someone outside of Arkansas, an outsider so to speak, come into my home turf and blatantly bad mouth my home. Before it had only been grumbling by people who actually lived there, and people always have the right to grumble about their home. It definitely set up an immediate defensiveness towards those that back fun of Arkansas. My family has been farming here for near two hundred years, and I am the first of my fathers line since coming from Holland in the 17th century not to be a farmer. I feel a sense of pride in that, I come from people that understand what hard work is, and what battling the natural landscape of the South is like. I guess that is why it is ingrained in me to protect the integrity of this area, and people that wish to speak ill of it front of me are going to be in for some fighting words. And those that know me, know that when that happens you will know you have been in a fight, that is for sure.