Gotta Love Family

One of my Christmas gifts was "Culture Shock! Ireland." Culture Shock! is a series designed to prepare you for cultural differences when heading to another country. I read the one for Japan before I went there for a long vacation and it was really helpful.

I found interesting, however, how much of what the book purported to be differences to be things I thought were just idiosyncratic to my own Irish family. One example is the book's point that the Irish tend to look for the humor in everything. As much as family can be frustrating, especially around the holidays, I found the following familial exchanges from the past few days funny:

Auntie calls Mom:
Auntie: What can I bring to Christmas dinner?
Mom: Oh, I think we're really in good shape, thank you anyway.
Auntie: Don't be silly. I have to show up with something.
Mom: Um, well in that case I suppose you could bring some sort of dessert.
Auntie: [dismissively] Now, when would I have time to make a dessert?

...

The ham is cooking, and admittedly it's taking quite a while. Suddenly the smoke alarm goes off in the kitchen. After more hand wringing than is necessary, we determine that the oven is the cause of the smoke. Strangely, it is on 450 instead of the standard 300. It doesn't take long to figure out that the only quiet one, my dad, had decided turned up the oven when no one was looking. When finally confronted, he explains: "well, I was just trying to speed things along."

...

Opening gifts Christmas day, and my cousin gives his mother a handbag. She opens it with appropriate oohing and aahing, and my cousin says, "it gets better, look at the label."

She does (without her glasses), and notes happily "ooh, it's from Ireland!"

Cousin: "no, it's not at all."

Aunt: "well you know I'm not wearing my glasses, what does it say, Italy?" She holds it up for all to see: PRADA.

...

Later the family gathers to play Cranium. One of the types of questions is the challenging "Team Gnilleps," where the team must spell a word backwards, with each team member in turn giving one letter. Obviously dad did not want to be forced to show his lack of spelling prowess, as he argued unsuccessfully that "alternating team members" as the card directed actually meant every other player and he could just sit out. No such luck. After a brief team conference they decided that to make it easier on him, they would let him start. Cousin reads the word: "percussion." Confidently my dad begins, "S."

Not to be outdone, the same category came up later for Auntie's team. Using a similar strategy, her team lets her begin with the word "innuendo." Fate can be cruel, because she had given my dad a good amount of ribbing. Her first letter? "U." When her son dropped his forehead to the table, she explained, "I forgot we were starting from the end of the word."