"...much as one NEVER replies to "How do you do" with ANYTHING other than "How do you do"

Reminds me of something I've learned in regard to the peculiarly New Olreanian expression "Where Y'at?" (meaning "where are you at," a variant form of "how are you doing.")

This locution has long been so common among, and characteristic of, a certain community of lower-class/working-class white Orleanians that the term "Yat" has come to mean a person easily identified as a member of that cultural group.

At any rate, a friend who is a born-and-raised Orleanian (an uptown type and doctor's son, by the way ~ not a Yat himself) once asked me if I knew the proper response to "Where Y'at?"

I wasn't sure, so he told me: the only proper reponse to the question "Where Y'at?" is . . . "Where Y'at?"!!