Local pride.

A few weeks ago at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was chit-chatting with three (white) women who were in, like one early 60s and 2 others in their early 40s, one of whom was (vegetarian).

And, it turns out that they had popped over from a town like an hour away to hear a concert at a local venue, and they were friends and relations of the band, as they said after I had said that I had heard of the band but had never seen it, and that people say it's really good and that I had heard that the concerts always sell out and so you have to get your tickets early.

And, since their town that they named is the same one where my one (sound guy) coworker is from, I decided to drop on them a trivia fact about it that he had told me.

"Oh, [their town's name]!", I was like. "Doesn't [their town's name] have the most [removed] per capita in the United States?"

"Why, YES," gushed the (early 60s white woman), and at that both of the other ones also burst out burbling and were like "I didn't know that," etc., and then she started immediately affirming to them that yes, it was true.

Then, like forty minutes later, my one (sound guy) coworker got back from doing delivery ones, and when I imitated how the woman gushed to him, he just started laughing uproariously.

"It's always something," he was like. "If you're in a town, you always have to have something."

I then told him that years and years ago my father had once observed the same thing to me, right after we drove through this really small town that had a huge sign up saying that they were the smallest incorporated municipality in the state.