My Italian Musings - Issue #26
I have completely lost touch with my Italian relations. I had a distant cousin living somewhere in New York City. But he was thirty or forty years older than me, and I have no idea if he's still alive. I do know he never married or had children. Sometimes, I get to thinking about the Italian side of my family. I wonder if I have any relatives in Palermo still. Someday, I want to go see Sicily to get an idea of what culture I came from and perhaps look up my family. I hear the Italians keep impeccable records, and I suspect I'd get more accurate information from them than I would the United States who messed spelling and other information up royally with the overwhelming influx all the durn foreigners streaming through Ellis Island.
On the other hand, given the mob rumors, do I really want to find my family there or not? Hmmm. Such a quandary. But the questions and curiosity remain. The oddest things will trigger the musings. This last week, it was my brother-in-law calling Jonathon a cracker in a family texting thread. (We become amused by the strangest things.)
So, Sam texted the family that he had a table at Cracker Barrel. Jonathon in his corny fashion said, "So do I. It's in my kitchen." Sam replied, "Yeah but I have a table at Cracker Barrel. You're just a cracker sitting beside a barrel." Jonathon replied, "That's racist!" And I said (and I am very proud of this burn, I'll have you know), "Well, Sam...you're a cracker in a barrel."
After that, I got to thinking about all the racist slurs my grandpa had thrown at him. I knew dago/dego was pretty common, but it seemed like there were more. So I went googling. After a few moments, I had the complete list of common slurs for Italians. A whole page full. WOP would be one of them, which stands for "without papers," as a lot of them arrived illegally. (Did mine!?) But the one that really made me laugh out loud was Wonder Bread Wop. This one was used by Italians to refer to other Italians who had fully assimilated into American culture. I knew that meant me. More or less everything that is Italian--the culture, the language, the cuisine--is gone. The only thing left is my appearance. It's really funny when I pose for photos with my lily-white "cracker" relations on my husband's side. I look like a little brown nut in the middle of them. And I'm not even that dark. They're just that white.
Anyhow, I hope I can get to Italy some day. Otherwise, I will be curious the rest of my life. And then, Jonathon and I should go straight to Ireland to get the whole culture shock effect.
In other news, Jonathon bought me a new robot vacuum cleaner last week. I named him Lindo, which is Italian for clean, neat and tidy. He has freed up a good bit of time lately, and I have gotten a lot of editing and rewriting done on 27. Lindo's the bomb. Cleaning up dog hair from a German Shepherd and a decent-sized mutt is no easy task, let me tell you.
Until next time, folks...
