You Know You're From Hawaii When...

Originally written in October 2014. Using My Point of Heu, here are 22 ways to know you’re from Hawaii:
1. You end your sentences with “no?” even when you mean “yes.”
2. Chili pepper water is a regular condiment on the table alongside shoyu, vinegar and salt & pepper.
3. While visiting the mainland you are trying to figure out why they don’t serve fruit punch.
4. It frustrates you when people don’t understand what “pau” means.
5. Jeans are your dress pants.
6. You love Spam so much you have found a way to recycle and reuse the container.
7. Your cousin’s baby luau has more guests than your graduation and wedding combined.
8. The sun is shining, the skies are blue, but it’s raining outside.
9. Traffic is backed up in your neighborhood cause two cars headed in both directions of the road are stopped, and the drivers are chatting with each other.
10. You take dad to a fancy restaurant, and he orders a steak with extra white rice and a bottle of ketchup.
11. Your favorite breakfast is eggs, rice and Portuguese sausage or Spam, but when you run out of meat, you fry up bologna.
12. Chickens or mongoose scurry across the road, and you don’t even notice, and it doesn’t even bother you.
13. You’ve named the gecko who lives in your house. You may have named the chicken outside too.
14. There’s a grand opening of a store, and people from across the island campout overnight to be among the first to see inside… and they have that same store near where they live.
15. You know all the words to “Hawai’i Pono’i,” but not the “The Star Spangled Banner.”
16. You have long arguments with family and friends about the correct pronunciation of Hawaii or Hawai’i.
17. Half of the staff at work called in sick, and there just so happens to be a large surf swell that day – cough, cough.
18. Traffic is backed up for miles because everyone is slowing down to look at the fender bender headed in the opposite direction on the freeway. Rubber neck check!
19. You know the shaka is not a gang sign.
20. You call everyone over 21 “aunty” or “uncle.”
21. You come back to the islands from a trip, and your next stop is Zippy’s!
22. And…you meet someone for the very first time so you have to ask, “What high school you went?”

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