Arkansan on the Loose

Everybody from San Francisco is gay. Gas station attendants are usually from India. And women can't drive. These are all stereotypes. This is an unfair way of painting a group of people with one broad stroke. This is typically the work of the prejudiced or the ignorant, or is it, hmmm.
The common stereotype that we Arkansans sometimes run up against is that of being inbred. This is usually garnished with a little bare footedness, toothlessness, dirt roads, and chewing tobacco, but mostly inbreeding. This usually erks me, but as I was attending a recent DNA class in Washington D.C., a fine place full of people around the country, I found myself doing my darndest to perpetuate the public's view of Arkansans.
This was a class of 20 DNA analysts from all different states, and there were two of us representing Arkansas. During my trip, I met up with three of my family members, yes cousins, that happen to be in D.C. at that time. One cousin lives there and works at the capitol, one cousin was in D.C. to take a class, and the other was just visiting. I'm sure that when the my classmates heard that this bumpkin from the south had so much family up there, coupled with the recent press about the Duggars and their 17 or 170 or however many kids, firmly cemented into shape the stereotype that Arkansans are prolific breeders and have infested all sections of the country.
During my stay, I twice had dinner with one of my female cousins, and, to give her a break from her living arrangements during her class, I offered to let her stay at my hotel for a night. She welcomed the offer, and the stereotype lives on.
Also, at the end of our class, our facilitators were unveiling some new features of the software that we were studying. One of these was a new population database to use when we are determining how rare a DNA profile is. This new database was entitled "Double Cousins." So naturally, everybody turned to my colleague and me for the definition of double cousins. They all got a good laugh out of it, but what they didn't know, and we dared not divulge, was that both of us, born and raised in Arkansas, WERE double cousins!! Not related to each other of course, but in our own respective families. (By the way, that is when two brothers marry two sisters, their kids will be double cousins…headache, I know.)
So, I apologize for not being a very good representative of our fine state. At least I brought shoes, parked my donkey ‘round back, and waited until after class to chew my tobacco.