You Know You’re from the Backwoods When…

When you move to the suburbs and wonder why it’s almost impossible to find live bait at a convenience store. In your hometown you had live bait available a both stores in town.

When you go on a camping trip with people who plan to ‘rough it’ in the wilderness, and to you it reminds you of the good ol’ days before you moved to the suburbs.

You’ve run into people who have heard of poison ivy or poison oak, but they have never seen it for themselves. You learned to identify the stuff before you went to preschool.

You have run across a person who has never heard of chiggers while you have dealt with the itchy buggers before you did bullies. This is a true story and I thought the boy was from another planet.

The only ticks that people from the city suburbs have been on dog shampoo bottles while you have pulled some off of you after your evening stroll. I have pulled on out of my head a school and stabbed it with a pencil during class at my rural school. All the boys thought it was so cool. I had to remember where I pulled it from when I got home to put antiseptic on it.

When you can remember back when your mom and dad would tell you to watch out for snakes, scorpions, bears, and bobcats rather than you talking to strangers on an evening walk.

When you move to the suburbs and you think this is the ‘city’. People from the area tell you that your house is in the ‘country’. “Not where I come from,” I think. Also the one acre lot that the house sat on was considered ‘a lot of land’ and ‘a big yard’. Pheh. This was like putting me in the slammer! I’m used to a five acre yard plus hundreds of acres around. We didn’t own all the surrounding woods, but the neighbors didn’t mind me exploring.

You get nervous about subdivision live. You’re not used to seeing your neighbor’s house–definitely on all sides!

When you watch movies about city folks coming to the backwoods and you think it’s funny. That would be just like if you took your new friends with you to your old haven on a spend the night trip.

Grilling out is just as fun in the winter as it is in the summer.

When your friends from the suburbs come over and they wonder what you’re eating after they have heard you don’t always just use chicken and beef.

You are perfectly comfortable swimming in something besides a swimming pool.

For some reason or another camouflage seems to be your choice of decor whether or not you are a hunter.

You wonder why everyone screams and herds to the other side of the room if someone sees a spider or a mouse. All hell breaks loose if it’s a snake; it doesn’t even have to be venomous. Lizards can cause a lot of commotion too. You just stand there watching them in bewilderment and don’t pay any attention to the animal. They ask YOU to kill it while they are all standing on chairs, tables, or stools. Sometimes you do so, or you be kind and put the poor thing outside. I’ve seen grown men clear out if it is a snake. I want to see what kind it is. If it’s not venomous, I want to catch it. If it’s venomous I need my armor on and/or get my thongs  first then I’ll go catch it. The thongs are not food thongs BTW; it’s the same ones they use on the shows on Animal Planet to catch snakes.