in which many various pieces of my brain suddenly made sense

My mom is from New Orleans. And by from, I mean she was born there, and then moved around a bunch (pastor's kid and all) and then returned to NO for high school.

She frequently laments that she raised "a bunch of damn yanks," but don't tell her I told you.

And I knew my mom was a big fan of southern hospitality, and that she still wants to move back there, but I never realized how much her love of the city was a part of me until Brett Will Taylor wrote this article. Mom sent me the link (surprise) and I click it to peruse, as usual, and suddenly I'm reading it thinking ... yep... me too... wow, weird.

I have a lot of fragmented thoughts in my head, but it usually takes some kind of external stimulus for those thoughts to present themselves as a coherent, concrete idea. This was one of those times. I was raised in New Orleans ... I just had the misfortune to be living in other places.

Caveat: I don't know about #7. But then, I've never actually met a pit bull.