Friday, August 10, 2007

You Know You're Greek if...

The following list has been compiled from an online student group and on a Facebook group called Greeks Invented Everything, and even though some of it is written from the perspective of Greek-Americans, it's still highly amusing and relevant:

  • You make frappe before leaving home, when getting to the office, after lunch, when having guests, before the guests leave, after the guests leave and before going to bed.
  • When shops have a sale they call your mom.
  • You still have clothes that you used to wear when you were five stored in suitcases.
  • You call an older person you've never met before "Thio" or "Thia".
  • You hide everything from your parents, but they still think they know everything about you, and make you believe that they actually do.
  • You learn how to beg the personnel at the airport to allow the excess baggage you've got as soon as your father stops doing that for you.
  • When you arrive home you find 20 people waiting for you at the airport.
  • You always curse at Greeks and then when you travel to Europe or the States you only make Greek friends.
  • When you come back from college you still have to live withyour parents, and fight over curfew all over again, as if you never left them before.
  • Your relatives alone could populate a small city.
  • Everyone is a family friend.
  • You fight over who pays the dinner bill.
  • You teach Europeans/Americans swear words in your language.
  • When you go on a date you start thinking of places that you never thought of before to avoid family or family friends. You end up in a lousy place and still bump into the relative with the biggest mouth.
  • You think you are liberated when you can't even smoke in public.
  • If you are 25 and not married yet, your parents make you feel that you are getting too old.
  • Getting married becomes the only way you could escape your parents.
  • You tell your friends how to rebel against their parents when you can't stay out past midnight.
  • You always say "Open the light" instead of "Turn on the light".
  • You ask your dad a simple question and he tells you a story of how he had to walk miles just to get to school with no shoes.
  • You're 5'4", can bench press 325 pounds, shave twice a day, but you still cry when your mother yells at you.
  • Your uncle owns a restaurant, has $300,000 in the bank, but still drives a '76 Monte Carlo.
  • You share a bathroom with your 5 brothers, have no money, but drive a $45,000 Camaro.
  • Your mechanic, plumber, electrician, accountant and travel agent are all blood relatives.
  • You have a relative that has done something that required the IRS to threaten him.
  • Your 2 best friends are your cousin and brother-in-law's brother-in-law.
  • You are a card-carrying V.I.P at more than 3 dance clubs.
  • Despite the hair on your back, you still try to impress the ladies by wearing your "Just Do Me" tank top.
  • At least 5 of your cousins live on your street.
  • All 5 of those cousins are named after your grandfather.
  • A high school diploma and 1 year of community college has earned you the title of "professor" among your aunts.
  • You are on a first name basis with at least 8 banquet hall owners.
  • If someone in your family grows beyond 5' 9", it is presumed his mother had an affair.
  • There are more than 28 people in your bridal party.
  • You netted more than $50,000 on your baptism.
  • At some point in your life, you waited tables.
  • 30 years after immigrating, your parents still say "Embros" when answering the phone.
  • You have at least one relative who wore a black dress every day for an entire year after a funeral... or their entire life!
  • You spent your entire childhood thinking what you ate for lunch was pronounced "sangwich."
  • Your family dog understood Greek.
  • Every Sunday afternoon of your childhood was spent visiting papou and yiayia or extended family.
  • You've experienced the phenomena of 150 people fitting into 50 square feet of yard during a family cookout.
  • You were surprised to discover the FDA recommends you eat three meals day, not seven.
  • You thought killing the lamb each year and having feta, tzatziki and olives on your dinner table was absolutely normal.
  • You grew up thinking no fruit or vegetable had a fixed price and that the price of everything was negotiable through haggling.
  • You were as tall as yiayia by the age of seven.
  • You thought nylons were supposed to be worn rolled to the ankles.
  • Mamas main hobby is cleaning.
  • You were surprised to find out that wine was actually sold in stores.
  • You never knew what to expect when you opened the margarine, after all you thought washing out and reusing margarine containers was normal.
  • You thought Orthodoxy was the only religion in the world.
  • You thought every meal had to be eaten with a hunk of bread in your left hand.
  • Yiayia never threw anything away, you thought seeing washed plastic bags hanging on the clothes line was normal.
  • You learned to play tavli before you went to school.
  • You have at least one relative who came over on the boat.
  • You have relatives who aren't really your relatives.
  • You drank wine before you were a teenager.
  • You grew up in a house with a yard that didn't have one patch of dirt that didn't have a flower or a vegetable growing out of it.
  • You thought that talking loud was normal.
  • You thought everyone got pinched on the cheeks and money stuffed in their pockets by their relatives.
  • Your mother is overly protective of the males in the family no matter what their age.
  • There was an icon in every room of the house, including the bathroom.
  • You wear or at least own a gold chunky bracelet.
  • Garlic is considered a main meal.
  • Olive oil is like a drug - you can't survive without it.
  • You don't know half your relatives.
  • You have a wedding at least twice a year.
  • You or at least most of your uncles own a spit
  • You consider soccer the eighth wonder of the world.
  • Your cheeks receive their weekly work out every time you visit an aunt.
  • Your last name ends with: opolous, os, as, or is
  • Your last name consists of the entire alphabet
  • When leaving a house, you stand at the front door for a half hour more and talk
  • You arrive 2 hours late to a party and think that is normal
  • Your church has a fully loaded bar
  • No air conditioning is on at the house or you'll get sick... "regma"
  • You use plastic grocery bags as garbage bags
  • Your parents have never realized phone connections have gotten better in the last 20 years and still continue to scream on the phone when calling Greece
  • You expect atleast 600 people at your wedding
  • Your 15 year old brother/sister can out drink ANY American guy
  • Your only vacation is back to the homeland
  • You tell your parents you're seeing someone and they start sending out wedding invitations.
  • You're home an hour late and you're already listed as a missing person.
  • You're Dad has those old Greek tapes in the car, and plays them on family drives. Especially in the vicinity of attractive members of the opposite sex.
  • You break a leg, and yiayia thinks your life is over.
  • You tell your parents you're having a party. They buy out the whole supermarket.
  • It doesn't matter if people can't hear what you're talking about - you talk so much with your hands that people know what you're going on about anyway.
  • You go to a wedding, and take a fancy to one of the guests. Later you discover that the guest is somehow related to you. =(
  • You go to a wedding, and are introduced to cousins that you never knew existed.
  • You tell mama you're not hungry and she thinks you have an eating disorder.
  • You can distinguish between kefalotiri and kefalograviera
  • You're an adult and are forced to be with your family at 12 midnight on New Year's eve
  • Your yiayia / mama / thia has a miracle cure for everything.
  • If you're a girl, your mother still tries to put those pony tail holders with the BIG plastic balls on the end on your hair.
  • If you're a guy, your mother still tries to make you wear that super frilly dress shirt with that huge bow tie, because it looked so cute when you were 7.
  • Your mother or father still feels the need to tell you, "katse kala" in public
  • You have been hit at some point with a pandofla
  • You can dance kalamatiano, tsamiko, zembekiko without music
  • You go to church picnics pretending you're there for reasons other than to check up / gossip about other Greeks
  • You or a family member has been photographed with a donkey
  • You are familiar with the phrase, "Sto leo yia to kalo sou"
  • You have one or more of those porcelain figurines in your house or you have broken one of those porcelain figurines and mama still hasn't forgiven you for it
  • Your parents make up the name of a street / store / TV show because they couldn't remember it or they couldn't pronounce it
  • You still get scared when you hear the name "Baboola"
  • Upon meeting another Greek you try to find out what village they're from
  • You or a family member wears their Sunday best to go grocery shopping
  • You were spanked by your friend's parents because your parents gave them permission to
  • You go to a wedding or a baptism and complain about the food, but are the first one to ask for a "to go" plate
  • You know someone who always feels the need to point out how much something they bought costs
  • You have a bottle of OUZO in your house right now
  • You have been threatened to be eaten by the Kako/ baboola / yero / pontiki when you were little
  • Add aki to the end of any American word, and it becomes Greek
  • Someone in your family owns any type of restaurant
  • Your family inheritance includes olive trees and xorafyia
  • Your entire house is a needlepoint warehouse...

I'm amazed that most of that list would apply if you changed it to: You know you're from the Homeland if... Guess we have more in common than I thought.

7 comments:

itelli said...

I don't think getting married is the only way u can escape ur parents, if u r greek. I don't think there's any way u can escape them... :) Which (if i judge by stories of friends of mine) isn't that much different from ur homeland.

Btw, the Tunisia trip post was excellent! Mind u, i haven't had frappe for ages, but that might be because of the arctic conditions we experience where I am... :)

AL said...

I'm gonna make my Greek man read this list.. he'll have a ball with it!

But i think i have more family members and a loud family compared to his... :)

Anonymous said...

Omg, this is so true....

Anonymous said...

So true!

Anonymous said...

My parents were both born in Greece and I was born in Canada. Very few of these points apply to me. Perhaps the list should be renamed, "You Know You're Greek Trash If..."

Anonymous said...

not all Greek families are like this. the majority of them are. very few are not. the families that are, are most definitely not greek trash...

Anonymous said...

not all Greek families are like this. the majority of them are. very few are not. the families that are, are most definitely not greek trash...