with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy…

You might not live in the country if…

• you ever say “depending on the traffic” when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere
• you never say “but I can’t come if the road is muddy” when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere
• you never say “but it’ll be later if I get stuck behind a tractor” when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere
• you have known some of your neighbors for less than 20 years
• no random strangers give you a (friendly!) wave as you drive down the road
• you think “the road” is an ambiguous phrase
• mail addressed just to “Your Name, Town” might not get to you as fast as usual
• you can’t remember what church someone goes to
• you’d never consider someone that lives 2 miles away to be a neighbor
• you think an auger is something unpleasant at the dentist’s office
• you think “imporoving your irrigation” means buying a $2 attachment for your garden hose
• you think “your beans are weird” is probably an indecent joke
• you wouldn’t be seriously insulted if someone told you “your beans are weird”
• when looking for a house, it never occured to you to avoid the highway so you don’t get so many comments about whether or not your crop’s rows are straight
• you have no idea where your nearest gravel supplier is
• you don’t have to install anything on your roof before you can watch TV
• you think a lagoon is something from Scooby-Doo
• when driving down the road, you can’t identify some of the crops alongside it
• you’ve never driven down a road with crops next to it
• your indoor plumbing still works when the electricity is off
  alternative test for Amish: the nearest phone is less than a mile away
• you moved to the area from out of state last week, and you haven’t met any distant relatives (or at least made any distant connections) yet
• when people refer to “the Old Country”, you wonder which country they mean
• families whose native language isn’t English have probably lived in the United States for less than 100 years where you live
• something more than 30 years old would never be considered “new”
• you know less than 10 that can remember a time when electric service wasn’t available in the area
• you’ve never lamented the invention of touch-tone dialing, since you don’t miss getting updates on the local news from the operator
• when doing genealogy research, you start somewhere other than the church archives
• when someone suggests having dinner together, you ask “at which restaurant?” instead of “your place or mine?”
• “at which restaurant” isn’t a stupid question where you live because there’s more than one good choice within 20 miles
• less than half of the radio stations in your area have a noontime ag report
• your high school sports teams have winning seasons periodically
• your graduating class had more than 25 people
• you think “the fifth grade teacher” is ambiguous because there are several 5th grade teachers at the local elementary school
• you don’t think traffic is heavy if there’s someone ahead of you at the stop sign
• you don’t think that the mere presence of stop signs is a scary indicator of urban sprawl
• as you stroll through a parking lot, there’s a car you don’t recognize
• fresh horse droppings on the road might cause the city to send out a street cleaning team
• you have no connections with people that can give you a discount on beef because it was alive on their farm last week

And the #1 way to tell you might not live in the country:

The waitress at a restaurant explains they’re out of chicken, and you think that means something other than your fried chicken will arrive 20 minutes late, but extra juicy.