I learned something interesting over the weekend. The experts across the various sciences that edit and provide the general layout of the United State of America have no idea where Oklahoma is or where it actually belongs. That's not to say people can't pick it out on a map, being a pretty uniquely shaped state has its benefits to notoriety, but when it comes to labeling the regions of the US, we appear differently in just about every departments map. What I'm talking about is the regional makeup of the states and how our state can somehow fit every different layout there is.

Depending on which regional makeup map you look at, Oklahoma is categorized as being located in The Midwest, The South, The Southwest, The Mountain West, The Intermountain Region, and of course, The Central Plains. The only two regional titles never bestowed upon our state is literally The East or The West. We're just somehow existing everywhere in between, and there's got to be a way to finalize exactly where we are. We're not alone in this either, Texas suffers a similar fate being torn between being located in The South and The Southwest, but at almost a thousand miles wide, it remains somehow correct in both references... as is not the case with Oklahoma.

If you hop on Wikipedia, Oklahoma is included in eleven different sub-regions too. We're apart of the American Frontier, Central United States, Great American Desert, High Plains, Interior Plains, Ozarks, Southern United States, Southwestern United States, Tornado Alley, Trans-Mississippi, and the Upland South. Go back further in history and we were once part of the Spanish Empire, later both French ruled Louisiana and Mexico ruled Nuevo Mexico, and once included in the embarrassingly short-lived experiment that was The Republic of Texas. It's no wonder we're a lost state to the rest of the country.

Oklahoma is not The Midwest nor is it The South. I could see it being both Intermountian and Southwest, or even standalone in the Central Plains... but it would take someone with a higher pay-grade than all of us to make that distinction. Where do you think Oklahoma fits on the map of regions?

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