You can't call yourself a Southerner if you don't like Fig Preserves..It's a law.

I'm a Southerner born and bred.  We have expressions and sayings that we don't think about as odd - but to outsiders, our words can be very puzzling.  I've included a few reasons that the rest of the world can't call themselves Southerners.

You can't call yourself a Southerner if:

• you don't have a least one rocking chair on the porch
• you don't know at least one person called Bubba
• you don't like grits, pinto beans, corn bread and fried catfish - not necessarily in that order
• you've never said "bless her heart!, poor thing!, or used "cotton pickin'" as an adjective
• you don't run to the grocery store at the first drop of a snowflake
• you don't use ya'll at least once in every conversation
• you've never seen a real, working outhouse
• you haven't seen grass grow taller than your barn

• "gettin' high" means anything other than a trip to the mountains
• you haven't had at least one sip of "moonshine"
• if you don't  say "love ya'" to your friends as you tell them goodbye
• you've never said, "night, night, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite"
• you've never been to Sunday School and have never memorized Bible verses
• you've never heard a rooster crow
• you've never tasted pork BBQ (cooking hamburgers on the grill is not considered BBQ in the South)
• if you haven't taught your children to call their elders Mr. Firstname and Miss Firstname, except Miss sounds like Miz.  So does Mrs. 
• if you don't know that supper - not dinner - is your evening meal
• if you don't know that "I've got no dog in this fight" means you mind your own business
• if you don't know that "over yonder" is our way of judging distance.  It can mean anywhere from within "spittin' distance" to up to several miles away.  It doesn't really matter much to us because we're going to get in our pickup truck, our 4-wheeler or our 'gator to drive there anyway.
• you haven't tried to make images out of kudzu much like other people make images out of clouds (see photos below)
  
  

  

  Dinosaur - Kudzu photos compliments of this website listed here in blue.
  
  

  

  It's a horse!

• you've never heard the excuse "a 'possum ate my homework"
• if you don't know a man who still opens your car doors and pulls out your chair at the "supper table" and restaurants 
• you don't mind being called a redneck because if you're not one, you're "kin" to someone who is
• you don't know that Southern women are Mack trucks disguised as powder puffs

Honeychild!  I ain't just whistlin' Dixie.  If you can't claim at least ten of these as your own, you ain't from around here, are ya'? 

Now why don't you add to the list?  I know I have some Southerners who read my blog.