Girl-Next-Door Kind of Girl

"I come from a home where gravy is a beverage."
-- Erma Bombeck

The Girl Next Door is from a small town, a large family, or both. She still has a healthy dose of what people 'round these parts call "family values." She calls her grandparents every Sunday and she's got her mom on speed dial. The Girl Next Door likes an uncomplicated life filled with the simple pleasures of family, home, kids, and food. She may not actually live on a farm, but she tends to keep a menagerie. Asked to choose between a dog and a cat, she generally won't. What's a good guard dog without a mouser to keep it company? She is caring and warm, welcoming and friendly. Anybody in your office ever bring in chocolate chip cookies? You got yourself a Girl Next Door.

The defining characteristics of the Girl Next Door are simplicity and tradition. Simplicity means that, unlike the Academic Girl, she's really not that interested in the great questions that keep philosophers up at night. When she can sit in the kitchen, drinking coffee, eating shortbread cookies with a friend, and listening to the cat purr on top of the radiator, what else is there to life? What else, indeed.

She Might Be a Girl Next Door if:

She drives: a good, solid American car -- a Ford Taurus, Chevy Cavalier, or Dodge Stratus.
She can talk for more than ten minutes about: her family's holiday traditions.
She begins her sentences with: "my mother says..."
She'd never: go to a rave.
She owns any of the following: scrapbooks, heirloom quilts, a Bible, family recipes, her grandmother's engagement ring.