You stop in the road when quail are crossing to wait for the whole "family" to get by safely.
You can correctly pronounce words like Tesuque, Cerrillos, Acoma, Buena, Ocotillo, Cochiti, Pojoaque, Socorro and Isleta (and you know what or where they are).
You have been told by at least one out-of-state vendor that they are going to charge you extra for international shipping.
You expect to pay more if your house is made of adobe.
You can order your Big Mac with green chile.
You buy salsa by the half-gallon.
You know what it means when they say it's from Hatch.
Your Christmas decorations include red chiles, a half-ton of sand and 200 paper bags. And chile pepper lights on your tree.
Your swamp cooler got knocked off your roof by a dust devil.
You can actually hear the Taos hum.
When someone says "Las Vegas" you think of a small New Mexico town in the northeastern part of the state.
You iron your jeans to dress up.
You know what to say when a waitress asks "red or green?"
You're relieved when the pavement ends, because the dirt road has fewer potholes.
You've seen at least one bat flight at Carlsbad Caverns.
You know what the night sky looks like full of stars, not pollution.
You've stared in wonder at the Milky Way.
You know what a horny toad is.
You can identify a quail, peacock, coyote, roadrunner, cricket and so on by the sound they make.
You know coyotes don't sound like they do in the movies. They sound wilder and more eerie.
Your hardware stores or Wal- mart sells snow sleds in the summer for the White Sands...but you can hardly find them in the winter.
You've slept outside either on the trampoline, the back of a truck, a VW camper, or in the yard with friends.
You savor the smell of rain in the desert.
One of your favorite pasttimes is rock hunting.
You know that Christmas would not be the same without biscochitos.
Your kids know how to make stuff with yucca plants.
You know what bartering is, and how to do it in at least 2 different languages.
You spent years saying you were leaving this backward no-account expensive place and never coming back; and when you leave you realize there's no place like New Mexico and you will retire here.
I've seen versions of this in many places, shortened it, and made changes, so I can't attribute it anywhere specific. But whoever originally came up with "You Know You're in NM" ... thank you! Spot on.
