Self-Aggrandizement: Culture Chameleon

While I am, in fact, mostly comprised of Russian and Austria-Hungarian blood, you apparently wouldn't know it by looking. Warranting a guess, people place my roots all over the globe - France, England, Australia, any number of points throughout Eastern Europe.

And, of course, Ireland. Especially during the summer, when time in the sun combines with my mother's (and great-grandfather's) testarossan genes to bring out red highlights, to amber-tint my scruffy beard, people often assume I must have a few O'Malley's somewhere up my family tree.

So perhaps it should have come as little shock when, on my way out this morning, Bill, our building's day doorman, pulled me conspiratorially aside. How did I feel, he wanted to know, about everyone taking over our holiday? As a fellow Irishman, was I proud to see St. Patrick's picked up by the unwashed masses, or dismayed that a fine piece of our heritage had been thoroughly Americanized and altogether watered down?

Not wanting to burst Bill's bubble, I skirted the question, and said I at least intended to swing by the parade. He scoffed. The parade? The parade? He was sure, he told me, that my clan's forefathers would far rather I celebrated in true Irish style: heading off to a local pub for live Celtic music and uncounted pints of Guinness.

And while, so far as I know, those clan forefathers don't actually, in my case, exist, I still wouldn't want to disappoint. For today, at lest, whatever the facts of my roots, I'll be playing by plausible appearance alone. Today, I'll be as Irish as I can. By which I mean, working to live up to my favorite (and technically, only) Gaelic phrase:

"Ta me are meisce" (say "taw may air mesh-keh") - I am extremely drunk.

Culture Chameleon Filed Thursday, March 17 2005.

Culture Chameleon
Filed Thursday, March 17 2005.