For those of you born and raised on this side of the
pond, there’s nothing too unusual about that. But for Windy City blow-ins like
myself, the use of the word "pants" in the bedroom had previously been restricted
to non-legged undergarments as in “the dog’s got your pants again – that’s what happens when
you drop them on the floor”.
But last week I caught myself asking Super if he wanted me
to take his pants to the dry cleaners. What’s worse, he understood. It was
then I realized that the conversion from Irish to Chirish was well underway. I’m
even getting used to seeing "realized" spelt (spelled) with a “z”- and can say “zee” rather
than “zed”.
I’ve written before about how sharing the same language hasn’t meant conversations with the locals don’t get lost in translation. Our first
summer, we did the obligatory trip to Navy Pier and I tried to buy water from a hot dog stand. The conversation went like this.
"Two waters,
please”
“Two orders of what?”
This was repeated several times until I realized
I had forgotten the “pretend you have a piece of fluff at the back of your throat which you are trying to regurgitate” method. I also tried to hand out
Hallowe’en rubbers to trick-or-treaters this year – until I remembered they are
called erasers.
But I do now go to the grocery “store” to buy “produce”,
with the emphasis on the “pro” rather than the “prod” – perhaps that’s a clever
ploy by the locals to stop you doing just that with the avos and peaches. There
they laugh at me when I say I don’t need a bag as I’m just going “down the road”.
Although to be fair, with a Northern Ireland accent, even my British friends
laugh at me when I say that. Sidebar, if you meet someone from Northern
Ireland, get them to say “How, now, brown cow”. Better still, google Liam
Neeson talking about his role in a cowboy movie and you’ll get my point.
I talk about my kids being in 10th Grade or being
a sophomore (still had to check how to spell it ‘though) and I’ve even discussed
an upcoming Manchester United "soccer" match. But that leads me to one thing I am still
struggling to come to grips with – all the balls, be it foot, base or basket.
Now this I appreciate is a true crime in Chirish-land where
if there is more than one team in a particular sport, you must decide for one or the other. Actually
this is in a way similar to my wee corner of Ireland where you have to be
either Protestant or Catholic. To the extent, that when Super discovered he had
Jewish ancestry, our local 90-year old farmer, in all sincerity, asked him “But
are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?”
My inability to sort out the balls is so bad that I have to
use my own mnemonic tricks to remember who plays what. So (in my mind) it goes “cubs” rhyme
with “clubs” so the Cubs are baseball, “bears”
make me think of “barefoot” so the Bears are football, “bulls” go with “balls”
so that leaves basketball.
The Blackhawks I have no problem remembering as we
moved into our new home just before they won the Stanley Cup. The cheering
that night made me first think of football games in Brazil while the
window-smashing and police sirens later took me back to my wee corner of
Ireland. I haven’t worked out anything yet for the White Sox so needless to say
if asked which baseball team I support, I’m for the Cubs.
Plus it took me a while to see their team logo says ‘Sox” –
sorry, back to the bedroom again!
