I’ve had fun annoying my Texan in-laws with this list, having to explain most of them with Melanie backing me up on a few (she’s acclimating). So if you’re from Boston, you should get these (although some of them require that you’re over the age of about 40) and if you’re not from Boston, well, you probably won’t get them.
“101 Ways You Know You’re from Boston: If…”
1. The Red Sox World Series win was, and will always be, one of the greatest moments in your life.
2. The guy driving in front of you is going 70 mph and you’re swearing at him for going too slow.
3. When ordering a tonic, you mean a Coke.
4. You went to Canobie Lake Park or Water Country as a kid
5. You actually enjoy driving around rotaries.
6. You do not recognize the letter “R” as a part of the English language.
7. Your social security number starts with a 0.
8. You can actually find your way around Boston.
9. You know what a “regular” coffee is.
10. You keep an ice scraper in your car year-round.
11. You can tell the difference between a Revere accent and a Dorchester accent.
12. Springfield is located “way out west.”
13. You almost feel disappointed if someone doesn’t flip you the bird when you cut them off or steal their parking space.
102. You listen to so much talk radio you understand what “Hi Howie, long time-first time” means.
103. You think that if a girl from Beverly weds a guy from Hull it’s a mixed marriage.
104. [Southie or Dorchester only] You identify yourself not as being from Boston, but as from “St. Mark’s Parish.”
105. Everybody drives in the left-hand “passing” lane (because nobody’s getting ahead of me!)
5. In Ohio we call them circles, like the rest of America. You guys should learn the language.
23. Since ours are called liquor stores, everyone actually knows what’s sold in them.
25. http://www.firstnightakron.org/
You Bostonians are not quite as elite as you like to think you are!
106. You consider “Red Lobster” restaurants quaint oddites.
107. You comprehend that when he says “so don’t I” he actually means “me too.”
108. Speaking o’ Howie, you’d be nonplussed if the words “How are ya” didn’t follow the greeting “Hiya, Cap’n”
23. Since ours are called liquor stores, everyone actually knows what’s sold in them.
109. You’re amused at the strange labels of other lands.
You Bostonians are not quite as elite as you like to think you are!
110. You hear stuff like this all the time and still know you’re wicked pissa.
111. You still, if you’re a working woman, can’t believe that women in other states actually wear their business shoes to work rather than wearing sneakers and carrying their heels to change into after getting there…duh!
112. A “basement” is a strange word for “cellar.” Everybody knows what “The Basement” really is.
102. You know what it is to have a “time” for someone.
103. You know who the “Gallery Gods” were, and you are a little uncomfortable, ashamed, and embarrased when you remember what the area they sat in used to be called.
104. You say “down cellar” when refering to the basement.
105. The names “Eddie, Mark, and Jim” evoke warm memories of Sunday nights in bed with a transistor radio. “Woo-Woo” has a similar effect.
106. You know what a “twi-light doubleheader” is.
107. You know that the game starts at 11 on April 19th.
108. Corita Kent and Ho Chi Minh are forever joined in your mind.
109. You are, or you know a “double eagle,” or a “triple eagle.”
110. Harvard beat Yale, 29-29.
111. You know that The Beatles stayed at the Madison.
112. And that “Spenser” lived in the fire station on Mt Vernon St., next to the Church of the Advent.
113. You know someone who was a “Feeneyite.”
114. You just accept that routes 93, 95, 128, and 1 can be going north and south at the same time.
115. You know that BC used to be next to “The Immaculate.”
I must not be from Boston.
You get a drink of watah at the bubblah and shoot elastics at your boss. You also consider everyone who wasn’t born in the state a strangah, even if they moved next door to you 20 years ago.
You not only know what Moxie is, but what it tastes like.
Wasn’t born theyah, but lived theyah long enough…
116. You know what “bleecha creechas” are, and used to be one.
117. You no longer confuse Jordan’s Furniture with Jordan Marsh, tolerate Bernie and Phyl and think Bob’s a clown.
118. You remember Paul Benzaquin.
119. You remember “WCRB Saturday Night.”
120. Every time you get off 93 or 495, you still look for a HoJo’s.
You know what “the Merge” was (hint: the worst intersection of the Interstate Highway System) and how to move across it, either way.
You knew how to navigate the intersection of North Street, the Central Artery, the Surface Artery and the entrances to the harbor tunnels (hint: always move forward).
Uhm, regarding #2: I’ve only visited Boston once, but I remember sitting in my car for hours waiting for traffic to move. I don’t recall any fast traffic, anywhere. Perhaps I was just in bad areas?
Hey, I’m a Texan, but my uncle’s lived in Cambridge for 25 years, so I’m familiar with the place . . . very funny list! (of course, in Texas, when we ask for a “Coke” it is often the prelude to ordering another soft drink altogether . . .)
– You don’t think a plane is *really* making a proper landing unless it comes in at the sort of 45-degree-angle it has to come in at at Logan.
– You know that “Bunker Hill” was actually fought on Breed’s Hill. (I’m descended from the Breeds and it always tickles me that Bostonians – and only Bostonians – know this. Must be one of those school-trip things.)
– You know several women who you know were married in dresses from the Filene’s Basement sale – and you’re a guy.
Living in a part of New York that actually has at least two CVSes and a Dunkin Donuts within spitting distance, I thought this was very funny.
Clearly, they were inspired by Signs You Might Be Too Canadian from the people at Canadian World Domination. My favorite of the “Signs” is No. 31.
As for the list above:
12. Which Springfield? Illinois? Missouri? Oregon?
46. OK. Complete it. “Lynn, Lynn …” What?
12. Springfield, Massachusetts.
46. “Lynn, Lynn, city of sin, you never come out the way you went in.” Several years ago the city fathers wanted to reform their reputation by changing the city’s name (rather than, you know, fixing the city’s problems) and came up with the oxymoronic name “Ocean Park,” which no coincidentally does not rhyme with “sin.”
It didn’t take long for some wag to come up with “Ocean Park, Ocean Park, don’t go there after dark.” That plan died quickly.
You were identified by your parish,not your neighborhood
You knew how to pronounce St. Mock’s in Dahchistah.
You actually heard Father Feeney preach on the Common.
You attended a Red Sox game by paying 50 cents for a bleacher seat.
You remember when the Red Sox had a Foxx and a Fox.
Actually those only man that you’re on old fogey from Boston.
The reason Lynn got that little rhyme is that many mill towns (Lynn was a shoe mill town, sharing the honors with Brockton, MA as shoe capital of the world) had a reputation for being dangerous for the many young women drawn to employment there. Lowell, MA was the first mill city planned to confront this danger head-on in the early 1800s (the mills of Manchester, England, by then had a reputation as infernal hell-holes). Even so, the story of Emmeline Bachelder shows this did not always work out as intended (“Sins of Our Mothers”, American Experience, 1989).
Meg Q.,
You made me laugh with the Coke reference. You know you have a yankee serving you when she says “We don’t have Coke; is Pepsi okay?” Shoot, it’s just one of the species of coke.
I lived up north for two years, for my sins. Nothing prepared me for ordering tea and having a cup of some weak, hot beverage put in front of me.
Back in Austin by God’s grace now, though! Dom, leave St. Louis alone and come downtown to St. Mary’s, then brunch at the Driskill.
> You know the neighborhoods
Dawchestah, High Pahk, J-P, Nawth End, Rossie, Southie, South End (nevah confuse those last 2), etc.
> You know how to greet and how to go to church –
Hihowahhhya.
help yah ahhnt out of tha cah and go to Saint Mahk’s (just nawth of St Gregahry in lowah mills):
alleluier alleluier. the Lawd is God, alleluier
“I am the alpher and the omayger, says the Lawd”
> NB: contrary to popular opinion by people west of 128, the “r” is not lost. We just move it to another word.
Yes, that’s the Law of Conservation of Rs.
Btw, there are lots of folks up he-uh who have distinct preferences between Coke and Pepsi: bring a Pepsi to someone who asks for a Coke, and you may get it returned to you. It happens. Coke is flavored with vanillin; Pepsi with citrus instead.