enamoured | I'm back in Carolina in my mind. (God bless James Taylor.)

A few years ago, I copied a bunch of forwards from e-mails people had sent me and I saved them to a disk. I found one on there called "You Know You're From North Carolina If...", and it made me laugh. Since I may end up going back to Carolina for college*, it really made me laugh.

The original list.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM NORTH CAROLINA IF:
1. You've never met any celebrities. (unless you count a woman who was the news anchor at a local station--she used to go to my church and I met her there.)
2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.
3. "Vacation" means going to the family reunion.
4. You've seen all the biggest bands ten years after they were popular. (ahahaha!)
5. You measure distance in minutes.
6. You know several people who have hit a deer. (my mom ALMOST hit one. Does that count?)
7. Your school classes were canceled because of cold. (check.)
8. Your school classes were canceled because of heat. (first week of seventh grade, they sent us home early because it got up to ninety degrees. Hee!)
9. You've ridden the school bus for an hour each way.
10. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. (that happened down here ALL THIS WEEK.)
11. You think ethanol makes your truck "run a lot better."
12. You know what's knee-high by the Fourth of July.
13. Stores don't have bags; they have sacks.
14. You see people wear bib overalls at funerals.
15. You see a car running in the parking lot at the store with no one in it no matter what time of the year. (yup.)
16. You use "fix" as an adverb. Example: I am fixing to go to the store. (well, that's more of a Southern thing, though.)
17. All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, or animal.
18. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.
19. You think of the major four food groups as beef, pork, beer, and Jell-O salad with marshmallows.
20. You carry jumper cables in your car. (you bet we do.)
21. You know what "cow tipping" and "snipe hunting" is.
22. You only own 3 spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup.
23. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.
24. You think sexy lingerie is a tee shirt and boxer shorts.
25. The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page but requires 6 pages for sports. (March Madness, anyone?)
26. You think that deer season is a national holiday.
27. You know which leaves make good toilet paper.
29. You find 90 degrees Fahrenheit "a little warm." (pffft, that's what TEXANS think is "a little warm". North Carolinians think anything over 80's hot.)
30. You know all 4 seasons: Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Christmas.
31. You know if another North Carolinian is from southern, middle or northern North Carolina as soon as they open their mouth.
32. There is a Dairy Queen in every town with a population of 1000 of more. (yup.)
33. You actually get these jokes and forward them to all your friends from NC.

Other variations, with the lines I liked most:

You Know You're From North Carolina When

1. You have spray painted your girlfriend's name on an overpass. (I've seen this a lot.)
8. The directions to your house include "turn off of the paved road". (that's the directions to my aunt's old house and my stepgranddad's place.)
15. You see no reason to stop at a rest stop if you have an empty milk jug in the car. (in my family's case, it was a Tupperware container.)

You know Pepsi originated in New Bern, Cheerwine in Salisbury, and that Mountain Dew was invented in Lumberton. (I knew the first one, but the other two I didn't know!)
You know Coke tastes better in the little bottles and that peanuts make Coke taste even better. (I have done this, except it's peanuts in Sprite for me.)
You have an opinion about UNC. You went there and loved it, or you hate everyone who did. (I applied there, and got rejected.)
Your school took a field trip to the State Fair in Raleigh. (fourth grade, man! We weren't allowed to go on rides, which upset us.)
A tobaggon to you means a knit cap, not a sled. (yep.)
You sold Krispy Kreme doughnuts for a school or church fundraiser before those glazed doughnuts went global. (in fact, it's weird to me that people here in Texas wig out whenever a new Krispy Kreme store opens. People go out in DROVES when a Krispy Kreme store opens down here!)
When you're traveling out of state, people ask if you're from Mayberry. (my mom's been asked if she knew Michael Jordan, though.)
Fifty degrees Fahrenheit is "a little chilly." (you betcha.)
You have no problem spelling or pronouncing "Conetoe" or "Topsail". (yep.)
Your school classes were canceled because of cold. (yes, this has happened to me.)
Your school classes were canceled because of heat. (see the original.)
Your school classes were canceled because of a hurricane. (yeah, when Hurricane Floyd happened in 1999, this happened.)
You know tea is served sweet unless you specifically ask for unsweetened. (this is another more Southern thing.)
You can spell words such as Ocracoke, Fuquay-Varina and Chocowinity. (I can spell Fuquay-Varina.)
In the Piedmont, you see all the grown-ups go out and play in the snow. (that's where I'm from, and that's true.)
Schools and churches hold barbecue fundraisers with banana puddin’ as the dessert. (yup!)
Your folks would rather eat at Bojangles’s than McDonald’s. (people: if you EVER go to NC, GO TO BOJANGLES. Greatest chicken place EVER.)
You have actually uttered the phrase, "It’s too hot to go to the pool." (I have said this before.)
You show this to some NC friends 'cuz ya know it's true, darlin'.

See, you just learned a whole lot about my home state. Don't you feel better now?

And another dumb thing: there's an Orange County in North Carolina, too. That's where Chapel Hill is located. Someone needs to find the humor in this.