• Someone says to you, "Please?", instead of saying "Huh?"
• 1 inch of snow on the ground will close the schools for a week.
• You ask the waitress for a "three way," and it's not a kinky proposition.
• What groundhog? It's the St. Patrick's Day parade leprechaun that forecasts how much longer winter will last.
• Losing football teams draw more fans than winning baseball teams.
• If someone asks, "what school did you go to," they mean which high school, not college.
• Indiana is about 20 miles away, but it takes about four hours to get there.
• It's too cold in the winter, and too hot and humid in the summer, to ever stay outside for very long.
• You drive to Columbus or Louisville to avoid the prices at the Cincinnati airport.
• City council members hold debates on whether or not they should debate in the first place.
• High school football gets 15 minutes of airtime on the 11 o'clock news; The NBA and NHL? Zero.
• Tourists still flock downtown to catch a glimpse of cast members from "WKRP," even though the show hasn't aired on network television since 1984, and the show was filmed in L.A., anyway.
• You ask lifetime residents where the President Taft house is, but they don't know either.
• If you do something - anything - in public long enough, sooner or later it will be banned.
• Your low-fat diet is never low enough to exclude a Graeter's ice cream.
• You order "goetta" (pronounced "get-uh") and the counterman actually knows what the hell you're talking about.
• You get through winter listening to Marty and Joe's broadcasts from the grapefruit leagues.
• Big Red Smokies are a ballpark treat, not cause to dial 9-1-1.
• If necessary, the city could easily be sliced into two new countries: East and West, and it would take 20 years for anyone to notice something happened.
• There is chocolate and cinnamon, not peppers and beans, in your chili.
• You can drive 30 minutes in any direction to hear a different accent than your own.
• You can accurately judge the social status of a person by learning at which Kroger's store they shop.
• You can go to any Church festival in any neighborhood on any weekend and see at least 5 people you either work with, went to school with, or dated.
• Even the slightest mention of former baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti makes your blood boil and your ears steam.
• The temperature hits 45 degrees and the sun comes out in any month between November and April, people walk around downtown wearing shades and no jackets.
• The top stories on the local 6 o'clock evening news look suspiciously like the articles you read in the newspaper that very morning - and even use the same quotes.
• Any carbonated beverage is a "coke," a coke is a "pop," a pop is a "soda," and a soda is a "float." Any questions?
• You've talked about leaving this dump for 10 years and you're still here, because despite all there is to poke fun at, Cincinnati is a pretty good place to live.

C.P.A. Soccer Home Page