The great Alan Jackson once said,

"Oklahoma's always been good to me."

This is an extremely true statement in my book. Growing up in Oklahoma isn't as bad as people from out of state think it is. I constantly meet new people and when they discover I'm from Oklahoma they always say something along the lines of, "Oh, you're from Oklahoma? I'm sorry that place sucks, there is nothing there." Yes I live in Oklahoma and I love every second of it, and I'm going to share seven reasons why. This is the first article to a seven part article series on why I love being an Oklahomie.

Oklahomies are fantastic people

There is a reason why I used the adjective fantastic rather than a more generic adjective like good or great. This is because the people in Oklahoma are truly fantastic, and this is due to several attributes. The first being, they are genuine people. In this day and age full of fake and two faced people it's refreshing to know that there are still real people out there. Don't get me wrong there are some bad apples mixed up in the bunch here, but a good majority are true, real people. Another fantastic attribute is that you can always count on someone to be there for you if you ever need help. It can be as simple as you needing help with hauling some hay, or extreme as you needing help with a life or death situation. No matter what the problem is someone will be there to help; being a helpful and reliable person is a major part in being an Oklahomie. The last attribute I'm going to share is Oklahomies care, the empathetic atmosphere created by the people in this state is incredible. To give an example of these three fantastic Oklahomie attributes I'm going to tell a short story. This past year a whole community rallied behind a tragic incident. A teenage boy, whose name I'm going to leave out of respect to him and his family's and friend's privacy, late one night was caught up in a bad automobile accident. His accident induced injuries caused an infection in his lungs and he ended up passing away. He was strong and fought hard for his life. He was a great guy and made a huge impact on everyone around him at home, church, school, and on his baseball teams. He was a textbook Oklahomie, and because he was such a fantastic person the whole community rallied behind him in support. His teammates, friends and family were with him every step of the way during his fight. The community began helping fundraise by selling car stickers to help pay for the medical bills, and to this day you still see stickers on the back of cars saying #prayfor(him). This difficult time showed all three attributes in the community, people were genuinely concerned and genuinely wanted to help in any way possible. So, before you consider Oklahoma a crappy place think about how the fantastic Oklahomies here make it a great place to live.