You know you’re from 40 when…

Disclaimer: This is a list compiled by a biased town girl who grew up on Key Parkway.

1. You hung out on one of the many stoops of Elmwood Terrace…

2. You’ve had conversations with the Elmwood Terrace security officers like you were longtime friends…

    

3. You used to attend the annual summer carnival at Frederick Towne Mall as a youngster.

4. You remember the Frederick Towne Mall as the heart of the Golden Mile.

5. Later in life, you and your friends walked around Frederick Towne Mall as an intuitive habit, all the while knowing there wasn’t sh*t in there…

    

6. E-Wood and CPM each had a respective crew.

7. You’ve walked a block to get chicken wings and fried rice from Hot Wok after the school bus dropped you home.

8. You snuck into the Hoyt’s movie theater at least twice.

    

9. Denny’s and McDonald’s were the hang out spots until the wee hours of the morning…or until they kicked you out.

    

10. You have devoured Casa Rico’s fried ice cream.

     

11. You’ve sampled the Giant Eagle candy isle.

12. You’ve walked/ran/scurried/abruptly stopped, across the longest and never-ending crosswalk of the strip (at the Hillcrest Drive intersection) and almost faced your death.

     

13. Baker Place was once the great wooded adventure in which you and your next door neighbors had gotten lost and ran for your life convinced you had been bitten by a snake on numerous occasions.

     

14. You knew all the shortcuts and back alleys: The landslide behind Hawthorne Square houses to the Lake Coventry basketball court that is quite messy when wet, the dirt road and neat steps from Hickory Hills apartments to the Waverley Elementary sports field, the convenient passageway between the Elmwood Terrace apartments and FTM that many consider quite dangerous at night, the rather abrupt and reckless dirt slope where the fence ends from Giant to Giant Eagle…

15. Your grandmother made you walk to Waverley Beer and Wine to buy her scratch offs.

16. You know Waverley is spelled with an e —  not Waverly.

17. The penalty for missing the Transit bus was one hour and a torturous trip through the entire city of Frederick.

18. You used the Red Horse, no not the inn the actual horse, as a landmark when giving directions to your home.

19. You paid $2.00 on Thursdays at Holiday Cinemas to catch a flick.

20. You knew Motel 6 as Holiday Inn.

21. Middle of the night walks to Giant Eagle during warm summers were routine.

22. You ordered a Gyro (JY-ROH, yes back then we pronounced it that way) from Gyro King.

     

23. You pronounce Baughman’s Lane with a G.

24. You’re reading this and either are nodding in agreement or smirking in disagreement because you’re from 40, and you know best.

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Republished from OUT40 Magazine, LLC ©  2014.