11 Signs You Learned to Drink in the South

3. Whenever you’re around a fire drinking moonshine with friends, you periodically check over your shoulder for dangerous animals.

Because everyone knows mountain lions and bears are attracted to the scent of southerners minding their diphthongs more and more with each swig of a mason jar.

4. While you complain about your 20-minute morning commute, driving 30 minutes to a bordering county for some booze seems totally reasonable.

Or hell, maybe even to the neighboring state if you’re one of the lucky residents of Mississippi or Tennessee. When you’re from a bone-dry county or state and you’re feeling parched, you gotta do what you gotta do.

5. Wine tastes significantly better to you accompanied by the creak of a swing on a screened-in porch.

Especially with rain pelting a tin roof during a summer thunderstorm and especially if it’s muscadine wine.

6. You know beer is best chilled in a mountain creek.

Wedge that can of beer in between some rocks and let Mother Nature do her thing.

7. You’ve successfully smuggled a flask into a concert in a cowboy boot.

Ten points if the said flask is camo.

8. You can open a beer bottle with pretty much anything.

Because who needs a bottle opener when you have a lighter, rock, nail gun, or belly button?

9. Pickup trucks take you right back to the good ol’ days of actually enjoying shitty beer.

Sip your coffee bean and Sriracha infused stout all you want while chatting about the rise of nano breweries — you know good and well you once chugged Budweiser in the back of pickup trucks in High School just like all the rest of us.

10. Your first drink was a hot toddy from your nana, and you always over exaggerated your stuffy nose to get one.

While a hot toddy may be one of your nana’s many elixirs, you also know being sick is literally the only occasion when it’s acceptable to let her see you drinking.

11. You’re not a snob about your alcohol.

Sure, we have Jack Daniel’s, bourbon, Sazerac (the oldest known American cocktail), moonshine, Mint Juleps, and Old Fashions, but don’t think we’re snobby about our booze. Instead, we’d rather show off our alcohol by sharing with out-of-towners and drinking vigorously and with zeal.

We’re just trying to have a good time, so swig that moonshine and cheers to the Dirty South.