I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be “from Maine.” This has been prompted, in part, by some arguments (so many arguments!) on a local Facebook page, in which the most frequent response to people with ideas that seem new or different, or opinions that differ from those of the original poster, or (the biggest tipoff) political leanings that are anywhere left of center is…“Are you even from around here?”

(Because, obviously, if you aren’t, then nothing you have to say is worth listening to, right?)

I’ve watched as members of our community are derided as “flatlanders,” “transplants,” or worse. I’ve seen suggestions that they should “go back to Massachusetts,” “try harder to fit in,” or simply “STFU.”

But what does it mean, exactly, to be “from around here”?

Well, for one thing, of course, you need to have been born here. That goes without saying. In fact, both of your parents really need to have been born here if you’re going to claim true “from around here” status—since, as they say, “A cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don’t make ’em biscuits!”

And let’s go ahead and admit it, you aren’t really going to be as accepted as truly “from around here” unless, at minimum, three of your four grandparents were also born here.

If your parents were both Mainers, but they left the state after college because they heard the siren song of better jobs and better economic opportunities, and were misguided enough to settle in southern New England and have their first four children in Connecticut, those children are not, and can never be, “real Mainers.”

Even worse, if those same parents then moved, briefly, to New Jersey in pursuit of a better job, and their fifth and last child was born there—even if that child was brought to Maine for the first time—to this exact part of Maine, her father’s ancestral home—at the age of three and a half months (riding all the way in a death-defying “infant car bed” wedged into the backseat of the family car)—that child, obviously, can never be a “real Mainer.”

(Of course, that child, who never lived in New Jersey again—because at the end of that first summer the family returned to Connecticut, where she lived from the time she was six months old until she was 17—can’t really be from Connecticut, either, because she had the misfortune to have been born Outside of New England. Nope, nope…no “Nutmegger” status for her.)

My father’s family roots are pretty solidly entrenched in western Maine, going back several generations here, but my mother was born in Searsport and her family roots are from “down east.”

While there’s no question that she was a “real Mainer,” I’m pretty sure my mother’s coastal background made her credibility somewhat suspect here in western Maine. Because not only is it important, around here, to be a “real Mainer,” using the criteria previously described, but also, particularly if you’re going to be taken seriously when arguing on the local Facebook pages, you need to be “from around here.”

And the circle on the map that takes in “from around here” seems, sometimes, to be vanishingly small.

Maine roots aside, there’s a lot of skepticism about people from other parts of the state, particularly parts of the state that (it may be suspected) regard themselves as more cultivated, more sophisticated, more open-minded, etc.

Things could have been worse for me, I suppose; my mother could have been from Portland, epicenter of that “other Maine,” with its designer coffee, rampant liberal politics, and overpriced restaurants.

My husband, who looks and sounds for all the world like a “real Mainer,” who was born here in Oxford County—and who, for Chrissakes, has been an actual real live Maine logger for well over half a century—can’t really claim the title, because his mother was imported from Maryland. All the buffalo plaid, chainsaw grease, and wood chips in the world can’t make up for that glaring imperfection (although I was unaware of it when we started dating, and was pretty sure that marrying him would be one sure way to raise my own “real Mainer” credibility).

All of my children were born in Maine, but only one of their parents and between one quarter and three quarters of their grandparents (we’re a blended family, so it’s complicated) were born here, so I don’t think they can accurately claim the title, either…even the ones whose fifth great-grandfather, the Reverend Eliphaz Chapman, was responsible for naming the town of Bethel. (Seriously. You could look it up.)

As for me, well, I am my parents’ fifth child, the one unfortunate enough to have been born in New Jersey, of all places. I don’t know a soul in New Jersey, and never did. During my first 17 years, I spent about 20% of my time in Maine and the other 80% in Connecticut, trying to figure out how to get back to Maine as soon as I possibly could.

When I was in the fourth grade, I decided I’d change my middle name to Oxford, in honor of the county where I planned to live, just as soon as I could get here. (I had already changed my first name to Beth, after the tragic sister in Little Women, and since my original middle name was Elizabeth, I obviously needed a new one.) I signed my school papers “Beth Oxford Wight” for a couple of years. (My teachers were very patient with me.)

I’ve been telling people for about as long as I can remember that I’d be happy if I never had to leave Oxford County again (and the past couple of years have done a darn good job of testing that assertion, establishing it to be pretty much true).

It seems like that should count for something, right? And yet I know plenty of so-called “real Mainers”—who have met all the criteria and have never had to fight for the title—who pick up and leave the state at the drop of a hat, trotting off to vacation wherever they please, flitting across oceans, even spending half the year “somewhere warmer.”

Then they come back and settle back in, and not one person has the gall to suggest that they’re “not from around here.”

I mean, really. If you can confess to being anything less than thrilled with our annual five months or so of winter, bookended by Goddamned November (the longest and most tedious 30-day month in the calendar, if you’re not someone who gets irrationally excited about chasing deer with a gun, and especially if you’re someone who would prefer to be in the woods hiking and not getting shot at) and Goddamned Mud Season (which is followed closely by Goddamned Blackfly Season)…if you can actually confess to that, are you even a “real Mainer”? Really?

Where am I from? I have no idea. I will tell you, however, that when I got a job at Bob’s Corner Store at the age of 19, and people started asking me if I had graduated from Telstar, and if I had gone to school with their kids, I thought I had finally made it. I could pass.