Texas Hair and Mountain Mamas...

I love our yearly forays into the mountains of New Mexico! I inevitably return with a rekindled desire to relocate to the mountains, and this year is no exception.

The culture of Los Alamos is fascinating. After living in the Dallas area for nearly a decade, I've grown used to women (and increasingly men) being Botoxed, bedazzled, and BMW'ed to the hilt. Status is conveyed by the height of the hair and the bounce in the boobs, or by the size of your house. Granted, I am making a major generalization here, but many Texas folks also seem to be unconcerned about the size of their ever-growing girth, too.

Now, juxtapose that with the New Year's Eve party we attended in LANM. There, I soon found out, the things that made one part of the "In" crowd centered on two things; education level and physical fitness. Where else but in the shadow of the lab that made the atomic bomb would you find a PhD in Physical Chemistry teaching preschool? The number of physicists, geologists, and engineers in the room made for an interesting experience, mainly in that I felt like a total numbskull. Hey, I may not be Einstein, but I've always thought of myself as relatively intelligent. Suddenly, though, all of my skills and intellectual prowess seem diminished when talking to a guy who has multiple doctorates and deals daily with keeping the nuclear detonators from going boom.

Honestly, I found it all exhilerating! It's been quite frustrating to see how many times education has been seen as a negative (witness the latest Presidential election, and the past 2 administrations). We do what we can with our own children to encourage intellectual curiosity, and yet run up against the age-old prejudice against being smart. I wish I had a dime for every time that I was chided for using "big words" as a child. I loved the precision of them, and the wonderful way they rolled off the tongue. "Gregarious" was a personal favorite, especially since I felt it described my personality.

There really aren't many overweight folks in Los Alamos, either. You'd have to work hard to get fat there, expecially since the lure of the outdoors is so strong. Hiking, biking, skiing, and shoveling snow all call for one to be in decent shape. Plus, if you want to have a sharp mind, a lot of fresh air and fewer excess pounds will help you to achieve that goal.

Sure, I look a lot more presentable while in the 'burbs of Texas with my heavily sprayed hairdo, tailored clothing, and ever-present face full of make-up, but I feel more real when hanging out in Los Alamos, with the freshly scrubbed face free of mascara, the hair barely recognizable after being smooshed by a ski hat, and layers of long underwear obscuring my curves. After all, fashion is totally subjective, right?