When you are Italian, everything in your life seems to revolve around you being Italian. You start using it as an excuse to do things others would get ridiculed for. You use every chance you get to mention your heritage, because you are proud that your grandparents/great grandparents are straight from the beautiful boot-shaped country. You get those people who just look at you and ask, "are you Italian?" and whenever that happens you consider it a pat on the back. Here are some signs you are Italian:

You're loud.

One of the most popular stereotypes of an Italian is that we have no indoor voices and we're always screaming.

You also talk fast.

You can probably recite "War and Peace" in about three hours if you tried hard enough. You also have the special gift of being able to understand others who have this gift as well.

You talk with your hands.

Everyone knows to keep their distance when talking to you to avoid any injuries. Once you get into a story, you lose complete control over your hands.

You have a lot of relatives.

I don't know what it is about Italians, but they love to make babies. Pretty much everyone is your cousin.

You are afraid of wooden spoons.

Don't you even think about breaking it in retaliation, because Mom has a back-up metal spoon. (Luckily, my cousins learned this lesson before me and gave me the heads up.)

You have thick hair. A lot of it.

Everything is covered, and you can try to shave, wax, whatever, but it's going to come back stronger than ever.

You can never go somewhere for "a couple seconds."

You know every time your mom goes to talk to one of her sisters, five minutes turns into five hours.

Goodbyes at family events take way too long.

You have a million relatives and it is a requirement to properly say goodbye to every single one of them before leaving an event. And by properly, I do mean hug and kiss each Aunt, Uncle, cousin, and whatever other relative might have shown up.

Everyone assumes you have mafia connections.

"No, my Pap isn't in the mafia and I doubt he'd tell me if he was."

You are always hungry.

Not only are you always hungry, but you are also always eating something no matter what.

Your last name.

It's super complicated to pronounce so you've been referred to your whole life as just your last initial. It's also probably the name of a restaurant.

Your blood is basically homemade sauce.

Your nunny probably makes the best sauce ever. You actually refuse to eat anything else because it would mess up the flow of life.