fall off the cabbage truck

To be gullible, naïve, or unsophisticated. The subject is often a person from a rural or rustic background. Mary has no idea about how to act in polite society, always behaving as if she just fell off the cabbage truck. I may have grown up in a small town, but I didn't just fall off the cabbage truck—I actually went to college in New York City. A: "OK, just be sure not to make lewd remarks like that during the dinner party." B: "Hey, I know how to act around decent folk! I didn't just fall off the cabbage truck, you know."

fall off the cabbage truck

To be a nai¨ve newcomer. Imagine a flatbed farm wagon laden with fresh produce arriving in a city. Sliding off the back was a country bumpkin whose brain, or so smug sophisticated urbanites would agree, contained no more clue about worldly ways than a head of cabbage that might roll off the vehicle. A similar expression was to say that someone “just got off the boat,” a reference to immigration in the days of steamship passage when new arrivals were thoroughly ignorant of New World customs. Among the snappy denials to being called a hick or greenhorn were “I wasn't born yesterday” or “I might have been born at night, but not last night” or the wonderfully imaginative Midwestern comeback, “Hey, what makes you think I just got off the noon balloon from Rangoon?”