How to Spot a Michigander

2. We won’t have the patience to teach you to play Euchre.

It’s not just a card game. Think Spades, but better. There’s strategy, competition, deception, and possibly betting and/or cheating.

Don’t know how to play? Learn. Difficulty: no one will want to teach you because it’s faster to find someone else to play with — because 99% of the native Michigan population already knows.

3. We’ll ask you for a “pop.”

I’m no etymologist, but my own personal theory is that perhaps we call soda “pop” here due to our proximity to Canada, where it is also often called pop (just as it is in much of the UK).

4. We’ll stand firm that Sprite splashed with cola is no substitute for Vernor’s.

I don’t drink Vernor’s ginger ale often, not even for the medicinal properties that my father claimed it had. However, every once in a while I crave it, usually when it comes to enjoying a “ginger and rye”.

Let me tell you something, rest of the world: Sprite/7-Up splashed with cola, while it may have the same color, is NOT ginger ale. I had the horror of asking for a ginger and rye at a bar out of state once, took a sip, and asked, “what is this?!!”

Once you realize that most of the rest of the U.S., let alone the rest of the world, has no idea what a decent ginger ale is, you’ll understand a Michigander’s diehard love of Vernor.

5. We will use our hand as a map.

If we live in the L.P., we’ll take their right hand and hold it straight up and use our left hand to point to approximate location of where they live.

Yoopers will hold up their left hand and turn it inward 90°, using their right hand to point to where they live in the U.P.

Can’t do it? You’re not from Michigan.

6. We know what L.P. and U.P. stand for.

No idea what I’m talking about?

Look up “peninsula” and figure it out from there.

7. We believe in trolls.

The majority of us here live in the lower peninsula, which is south of the Mackinac Bridge. As we live below the bridge, we are trolls. Get it?