I was born in a small town...

You all know that John Cougar Mellenkamp song, right?

Well, I’m typically not a big fan of the "forwarded-junk-mail-junk" out there. In fact, I despise them and usually delete them before I even open them. (Sorry to all my junk-mail-forwarding-friends…) But a high school classmate forwarded one to me last week entitled, “You know you’re from a small town when…”

And since I grew up in a very small town in (the middle of nowhere) South Dakota, it caught my attention.

I actually got a good laugh and it brought back some really great memories. But just to warn you "big-city kids", you might want to skip this post. I don’t think you’ll understand.

1) You can name everyone you graduated with. Of course I can – there were 24 in my class. Do you want me to alphabetize them? I can even tell you where each of them lived, what their parents names were (and some of their grandparents), what church they attended, how many bothers and sisters as well as their ages, and their approximate GPA. Piece of cake.

2) You went to parties at a pasture, barn, gravel pit, or in the middle of a dirt road. On Monday you could always tell who was at the party because of the scratches on their legs from running through the fields when the party was busted. Oh yeah. You wanna see my scars? This makes me think of my senior prom night. There was a huge kegger out at the sand pits and it got busted by a whole swarm of state and local law enforcement. There’s nothing like watching 100 kids trying to scurry up a 90 degree incline of sand. I wasn’t drinking that night (thank you for the brilliant advice/threat, mom) so my friends and I were in one of the first cars heading back to town. I think we picked up 5 kids randomly wandering along highway 47 that night.

3) You used to "drag" Main. I’m pretty sure we burned up a tank of gas every weekend cruising main or looping around the outskirts. It’s really quite amazing when you figure that Main Street is actually only 2 blocks long and the outskirts are just under 3 miles.

4) You scheduled parties around the schedules of different police officers, because you knew which ones would bust you and which ones wouldn't. I don’t think it’s that certain ones wouldn’t bust us…I think it’s that certain ones were just smarter than others. The night cop in my hometown was known as “Spook”. (I don’t know why and don’t care to either). He wasn't the brightest bulb, as they say, but some of my peers lived to torture that man. One of the best pranks that I remember was when some kids lured him over a hill in the middle of town only to have his police-car almost crash into a make-shift road block made of cinder blocks on the other side.

5) You knew which section of the ditch you would find the beer your buyer dropped off. Our “supplier” usually dropped off our Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill on the south end of the West Lake Road. It worked pretty well.

6) The whole school went to the same party after graduation. And after homecoming. And after the last day of school. And after the Eureka-Leola football game. And…come to think of it, the whole school was at the same party any given Friday or Saturday night.

7) You didn't give directions by street names but rather by references. My hometown had the best reference point of any. We had a camouflage house at the end of main, in the center of town. Everyone knew it. It was infamous. It was the party house. Parents dreaded it. Younger kids were in awe of it. With it as your point of reference, you could get anywhere.

And really, the streets have names??

8) You couldn't help but date a friend's ex-boyfriend/girlfriend. In a small school, there’s just not that many people to go around. And then, once all the hometown boys/girls were sorted through, it was cool to move on to the small neighboring towns.

9) Your car stayed filthy because of the dirt roads, and you will never own a dark vehicle for this reason. It’s true. The last 3 cars I’ve owned have been white. To get to our house, you had to drive ¼ mile on a dirt road surrounded by wheat fields To this day, I make sure my windows are up when I'm driving anywhere near a dirt road. Sure, the dusty car was a pain to clean, but getting nailed in the forehead by a huge, disgusting, flying grasshopper was even worse.

10) The town next to you was considered "trashy" or "snooty," but was actually just like your town. I have to admit, to this day, I still think of Hosmer kids as really dorky, and Selby kids as a bunch of snots. Sorry, didn’t mean to offend anyone.

11) The people in the "big city" dressed funny, and then you picked up the trend 2 years later. I’m pretty sure the big-city kids moved beyond tucking-and-rolling waaaay before we did.

12) Anyone you wanted could be found at the local gas station or the town bar. Yep, they were either at Al’s Place on Main, or the Cenex gas station on Hwy 10. Unless it was summer, then they might be at the lake.

13) Directions were given using THE stop light as a reference. What??? We didn’t have a stoplight.

14) When you decided to walk/run somewhere for exercise, people would pull over and ask if you wanted a ride. Really. This happened all the time. Sometimes in the fall when the farmers would be hauling their grain into the elevator and it was really windy and the dust would be blowing in my eyes…I’d take them up on it.

15) Your teachers remembered when they taught your parents. And sometimes they called you by their name. Our guidance counselor Mr. Neuharth called me Karen all the time.

16) You could charge at any local store or write checks without any ID. We would charge things regularly when we were kids. I think mom would just pay the bill the next time she went in to get groceries. I think you could probably get by without any form of ID at all in my hometown. For your whole life.

17) The closest McDonalds was 25 miles away (or more). It was 75 miles for us – Aberdeen, SD. I had my first McDonalds when I was in Jr. High. I remember loving it and my dad thought it was gross.

18) The closest mall was over an hour away. Again, 75 miles to any type of shopping. But if we wanted a real mall – that was 120 miles away in Bismarck, ND. And they even had a Maurices!

19) You've pee'd in a cornfield. What…and you haven’t?