I woke up to this scene this morning. It is April 17. I’m supposed to be looking out over freaking blooming flowers, not this crap. And I have to venture out this morning for a routine doctor’s appointment. One dare’s not miss these since it takes 6 months to reschedule one. Really, they would be celebrating the 1 year memorial of my passing before I could get to see the doc again.

Time to lighten up. How about a joke:

An Irishman and an Englishman walk into a bakery. The Englishman steals 3 buns and puts them into his pockets and leaves. He says to the Irishman ‘”It took great skill and guile to steal those buns. The owner didn’t even see me.”

The Irishman replied: “That’s just simple thievery. I’ll show you how to do it the honest way and get the same results.” The Irihman then proceeded to call out the owner of the bakery and says “Sir, I want to show you a magic trick.” The owner was intrigued so he came over to see the trick.

The Irishman asked him for a bun and then proceeded to eat it. He asked for two more and ate them. “Wait,” the bakery owner exclaimed, “where’s the trick?”

The Irishman then said, “Look in the Englisman’s pockets.”

I was perhaps 4 years old, if that, when I first was made aware of the historic tensions between the Irish and the English. I was with my father one day when an acquaintance of his asked me the classic question in New England, “What are you?” I was supposed to answer with my ethnic makeup … half Irish and half Polish. But I was a tot at the time and confused. Now I’m an old fart and still confused.

Displaying my cunning deductive reasoning that later made me such a successful academic (LOL), I reasoned that I was English since that’s the language I spoke. “English,” I said proud of myself for figuring all this out.

Wrong answer. My father pulled me aside and gave me my first lesson in ancient hatreds though, to be honest, he was perhaps the least prejudiced person among my family and friends since everyone back then seemed to hate everyone else. That was the reason for the ‘what are you’ question in the first place … the inquirer wanted to know where on the hierarchy of ethnicities you were to be assigned. You were defined by your ancestry.

Now, there was a rationale for the Irish-English animosity. For several hundred years, the so-called ‘limeys’ oppressed and exploited my ancestors and tried to obliterate their culture. In the great Irish famines of the 1850’s and 1870s, as hundreds of thousand perished from humger or fled their homeland, English landlords piled Irish crops on to ships to sell for profit elsewhere. There was much to be angry about.

Nevertheless, the sense of ridiculous ethnic pride or, worse, ethnic and racial hatreds never took hold with me. I resisted them from the very beginning. I’m not sure why though I’ve thought about than conundrum many a time.

I’m not claiming to be perfect. There is one group I detest intensly. But it is not based on an ascribed attribute over which the members have no control … like ethnicity or race. No, my prejudice is rooted in their chosen beliefs and behaviors.

Whom do I hate …. today’s Republicans!

I guess I’m not ready for Sainthood yet.

Damn, now I have to slip and slide over to my medical appointment.