I met my boyfriend’s family for the first time at a horse show in Springfield. I used to talk about how adorably rural this experience was until my friend from the Carbondale area and my boyfriend from central Illinois accused me of patronizing them. My boyfriend complained, “anything we do at home is either cute or stupid, or a combination of both, to people from the suburbs.”

He’s right. Those of us hailing from the Chicago area tend to patronize the U of I students who come from the southern half of the state – and by “southern half” I mean anywhere south of I-80.

But my friend and boyfriend have a few misconceptions about suburbanites, too. Hence, I decided to provide a practical translation guide to be used when attempting to understand a friend or significant other from the opposing half of Illinois.

First, I will explain life in southern Illinois to my fellow suburbanites.

Apparently deer are a really big thing south of I-80. My aforementioned friend has hit two, and my boyfriend claims that 15 wander across his driveway any given night. Because those darn animals continually obstruct driveways and rural highways, deer hunting is really popular. It’s so popular in my boyfriend’s town that kids get a day off of school on “Deer Day,” the first day of deer hunting season. I kid you not.

Another big thing in central Illinois is a strange dish consisting of fries, a bun and meat covered in cheese. This is called a “horseshoe,” not, as I would have named it, “heart attack on a plate.”

Your horseshoe-eating, deer-hunting friends probably live in small towns. Some of them even live outside the nearest small town in the middle of absolutely nothing. They call this living “in the country,” you know, as opposed to living “in town.” Living in the country allows your southern friends to say cute things like, “I’m going to drive into town tonight” or “she lives across town.” Even better, your country friends’ addresses may involve cute expressions like “rural route.” To visit these friends, hop on I-55 South and drive. Forever. Then turn onto a rural route that hits a town with one gas station and maybe a stop light about every 20 miles.

Once you’re there you can share in the joy of having nothing better to do than visit an abandoned bridge in “the boonies” and chuck random objects off it.

Now, I will divulge the lifestyle of the suburbanite to all you cute southerners.

We would freak out if we discovered animals meandering across OUR driveways. Normally getting our fix of furry entails a visit to the zoo.

Also, we think it’s really cool to wear John Deere hats and shirts, even though our lawnmower is the biggest Deere we’ve ever seen, and even though the lawns we mow consist of approximately 2 square inches.

We talk about distance in terms of minutes, i.e. “I live thirty minutes west of Chicago.” Speaking of Chicago, we can’t understand why you support a baseball team from a completely different state over our Cubbies.

When we were growing up, our mothers fitted us with helmets and kneepads for bike excursions across the street. Our parents probably also purchased a huge yellow Escalade for our 16th birthday, and we’ve been cruising around the ‘burbs in our Abercrombie and Fitch outfits blaring Green Day ever since. We enjoy bowling, board games and going to the Metro to see punk rock bands. The biggest yuppies among us attend poetry slams or lounge around friends’ basements and the nearest Starbucks, talking about obscure things like Society and The System.

Finally, we don’t really mean to step on your toes (or cowboy boots, as the case may be). Consider this my apology for being so patronizing. If you’d like to talk about it over coffee, you can find me at my hometown Starbucks, the one by Old Navy – not the one by Friday’s.