You might be from New Orleans if...
You're out of town and you stop and ask someone where there's a drive-thru daiquiri place, and they look at you like you have three heads. You drive your car up onto the neutral ground if it rains steadily and heavily for more than two hours. You call the 'Median' the 'Neutral Ground.' You have flood insurance. The four seasons of your year - crawfish, shrimp, crab and oyster. You greet people with , "Howzhyamomma'an'em?" and hear back, "Deyfine, darlin!" Someone asks for an address by compass directions and you say it's Uptown, downtown, backatown, riverside or lakeside. Your burial plot is six feet over rather than six feet under. You know the Irish Channel is not Gaelic-language programming on cable. You can pronounce Tchoupitoulas but can't spell it. You don't worry when you see ships riding higher in the river than your house. You have no idea what a turn signal is or how to properly use it. You can cross two lanes of heavy traffic and U-turn though a neutral ground while avoiding two joggers and a streetcar, then fit into the oncoming traffic flow while never touching the brake. You can consistently be the second or third person to run a red stop light. You've been rear-ended 10 times by people with no insurance. You get off the stoop, walk down the banquette and cross the neutral ground to go get a sno-ball. You know better than to drink hurricanes or eat Lucky Dogs. You consider a Bloody Mary a light breakfast. The major topics of conversation when you go out to eat are restaurant meals that you have had in the past and restaurant meals that you plan to have in the future. You judge a po-boy by the number of napkins used. The waitress at your local sandwich shop tells you a fried oyster po-boy dressed is healthier than a Caesar salad. You know the definition of "dressed." You can eat Popeye's, Haydel's and Zapp's for lunch and wash it down with a Barq's and several Abitas, without losing it all on your stoop. You have gained 10 or 15 pounds permanently, but you don't care anymore. You think "drinking water" when you look at the Mississippi River. The smell of a crawfish boil turns you on more than Chanel #5. You enjoy sucking heads more than sucking face. You burl crawfish or fry them in erl, and pack the uneaten tails in furl. Then you wrench your hands in the zinc with an onion bar to get the crawfish smell off 'em. There is a St. Joseph lucky bean in you mama's coin purse. When you speak with a tourist, he asks, "Are you from Brooklyn?" You're not afraid when someone wants to "ax" you. You were born at Baptist, raised in Metry and hang with Vic and Nat'ly. You go by ya mom-ne-ems on Good Friday for family supper. You don't learn until high school that Mardi Gras is not a national holiday. You push little old ladies out of the way to catch Mardi Gras throws. You leave a parade with footprints on your hands. You believe that purple, green and gold look good together-you will even eat things those colors. Every time you hear sirens you think it's a Mardi Gras parade. You go buy a new winter coat and throw your arms up in the air to make sure it allows enough room to catch Mardi Gras beads. You have a parade ladder in your shed. Your finest china has Endymion written on it. Your first sentence was, "Throw me something mistah," and your first drink was from a go-cup. You wonder what Anne Rice has against a building that looks like a Mardi Gras float. You have a special set of grungy, well-broken-in shoes you refer to as your "French Quarter" shoes. Every so often, you have waterfront property. Your last name isn't pronounced the way it's spelled. You believe Al and Anne are the Uptown version of Vic and Nat'ly. You know what a nutria is but you still pick it to represent your baseball team. You have spent a summer afternoon on the Lake Pontchartrain seawall catching blue crabs. You watch a movie filmed in New Orleans and say things like, "Dere ain't no way they can run out of a cemetery right on to Bourbon Street." Speaking of which, you haven't been to Bourbon Street in years. You have to buy a new house because you ran out of wall space for Jazz Fest posters. You drink Dixie, whistle Dixie and name your dog Dixie. You describe a color as K&B purple. You like your rice and politics dirty. You worry about deceased family members returning in spring floods. You reply to anything and everything about life here with, "Only in New Orleans." You have a monogrammed go-cup. A friend gets in trouble for roaches in his car and you wonder if it was palmettos or those little ones that go after the French fries that fell under the seat. You move somewhere else - and you feel like you are FROM Oz and you moved to Kansas.
[alas, i cannot take credit for this lovely work, it was forwarded to me about a zillion years ago.]
