Are you OKP?

Hi all! Long time no see!

I grew up in a small town. And by small, I mean 1200 people small. If you come from a small town you will know that this does not really produce any amount of openmindness. The town where I grew up is 40km from the nearest big city, and really only exists because of the ability to grow good grapes for wine and other fruit for export, plus a very large number of cows for milking. Yep I grew up surrounded by farmers but that's not really what I'm here to tell you about...

Due to the large range of seasonal work in the area in prime picking season, we would have loads of travellers coming through, looking to make a bit of extra money. This is how my sister and I picked up our favourite phrase. No, not from the (usually foreign) workers but from my grandmother. God bless her, she is - to put it bluntly - a racist. It was not uncommon for us to hear in our childhood that "they're not our kind of people....." always said in a loud whisper, with an accompanying hand gesture.

As we got older my sister and I would jokingly apply it to people we met in our lives. "Oh, you aren't going to the A&P show? Not our kind of people." "You can't make biscuits from scratch? Oh, not our kind of people." Just lately it has crept into my work life too. "Who's working in the room next door to you? Oh, Stef, she's our kinda people."

When I_heart_Fifty and I first became ensnared in the twitrap, I must admit out twidar (like gaydar but for twitards) was a little rocky. We would sometimes think we had found a fellow twitard, only to be bitterly disappointed. We needed to know - were they as into this as we were?

The question we needed answered was - were they our kind of people??

Just because someone had read the books, didn't mean they had a love. Just because they loved the books didn't mean they liked to oggle paparazzi shots of Rob. Just because they liked to drool over Rob, didn't mean they were into blogs or fanfic. We needed to know if they were as far down this rabbit hole as we were.

I_heart_Fifty and I frequently tell each other about newbies we have embraced into the fold and the first question out of our mouths is always "are they OKP?" The answer is usually "yes, but not into fanfic" or "yes, but not into blogs."

I work with a few girls who are into Twilight in a big way. We went to the midnight screenings together, we counted down the days 'til Eclipse came out on DVD, and we frequently email each other hot pics of Rob to get us through the night shifts - but are they are not really all the way OKP.

I have only told two of them I write fic, and the same two have read this blog but I just don't think the rest would understand...

[Note from I_heart_Fifty: watch this space. I think we have ensnared an OKP who may become a TwiKiwi contributor! Squee! She is reading this right now, thinking - oh shit, what have I gotten myself in for... tee hee hee]

he he how some people feel about fan fic....

The question I ask you is - are you our kinda people?