• There are more liquids than solids in your refrigerator.
• Summer means you sweat through three shirts a day.
• Sweet tea is the “elixir of life,” unless you hate it, in which case it’s “liquid diabetes.”
• Women who haven’t worn a dress in twenty years buy one, hoping for heat relief.
• The lemonade glass you put down is two inches from where you placed it, due to condensation hydroplaning.

• Strangers look you in the eye.
• Strangers say hello from the sidewalk across the street.
• Store clerks genuinely want to help you.
• “No” is a complete sentence.
• You rarely find yourself thinking, “I wonder what they meant by that?”
• People love to talk, and they remember what you say, commenting on it weeks later.
• There are plenty of folks who can out-stubborn you.
• Being polite is a minimum standard.
• Drinks come with straws.
• The U.S. flag is flown proudly.
• Vehicles have the right of way.

• You time your errands around available shade in the parking lot.
• 7:00 am is an acceptable time for lawn mowing and marching band rehearsal.
• Kids take their bathing suits to church-sponsored day care.
• Salt and sugar are the only spices, both applied like the lid fell off the shaker.

• Mockingbirds are not the sweet innocents Harper Lee described.
• Cardinals are gorgeously aggressive.
• Birds make more noise than traffic.
• Trees and shrubs have candy-like names: sweet gum, sugar berry, honeysuckle.
• You could sleep for a solid week under a magnolia tree with its cool shade and intoxicating aroma.

• People at church know their Bible.
• Being here is like unfolding a U.S. map and discovering an entire country you didn’t know existed, yet it’s still called the USA.

I think I found my people. 😎