On Being Italian, Part I

If you ever catch me in this shirt,
you have permission to hit me
in the groin with a bag of meatballs.

Some days I'm not sure what to blog about. I come home from the soul-suck of a job, fulfill my parenting duties until the kids go to bed, then stagger downstairs to one of the computers to face a blank Blogger screen in order to write something for which I will receive no compensation instead of working on something that could possibly lead to compensation, even if it's the literary equivalent of an incomplete Powerball ticket.

For inspiration, I headed over to the blog written by my former boss, a blog I highly recommend, and noticed that he had written -- with his usual flair for logos, ethos, and pathos -- about his confusion regarding his heritage. So I decided I will do the same.

I have a very Italian-sounding name, even though I'm only 75 percent Italian. I'm 12½ percent Greek and 12½ percent German. When I mention these ratios I usually get an odd look, like I'm trying to be amusing with those "half percents," but it's simple math:

• Dad has all-Italian parents (100 percent for Dad, 50 percent for me)
• Mom has an Italian mother (50 percent for Mom, 25 percent for me) and a father whose father was Greek and whose mother was German (25 percent each for Mom, 12½ percent each for me)

Despite having the Greek and German blood, and the fact that my Mother claims I look more Greek than anything, I don't have any particular pride in either country. I even went to Greece on my honeymoon, but I never had the feeling of "Ah...I'm finally home!"

NO CAPEESH [sic]

I don't know where this is.

On the other hand, I don't feel much attachment to Italy, either. I don't speak Italian, though Dad did with his mother while she was alive. I do enjoy movies about organized crime, but I don't admire anyone who's chosen that life and find the worship of John Gotti during his heyday to be like hanging a poster of the Unabomber in your bedroom.

I'd never given much thought to my Italian-ness, other than when I introduce myself and I'm met with a reply like You must be Italian, until I started dating my first serious girlfriend, during senior year of high school.

She was (and is) Sicilian, and like most Sicilians, she and her family was on the short side; she stood 4'11" back then and might be even shorter now. The day I met her parents, her father, who was born in Italy but spoke perfect English and who by the way was about 5'6", asked me, with a hint of suspicion:

"What part of Italy are you from?"

Technically, I wasn't from any part of Italy, since my birth certificate read "Queens, New York," but I knew what he meant. Unfortunately, I didn't know. (That was probably strike one in our relationship.)

So I had to ask my parents which parts of the boot-country their ancestors fled, and with the information I was given, I proudly revealed to Girlfriend's Dad that I could trace my heritage back to Calabria and Naples. I think I even said "Napoli" instead of Naples.

The Dad just smiled the smile that dads smile when they're considering the best way to dispose of a daughter's boyfriend's corpse and said, "Hmmm."

Girlfriend's Mother, also 4'11" but about 5'3" if you measured to the top of her hair, just giggled and replied, "Oh...mountain guineas."

I shouldn't have been surprised by any of this, because my mother had warned me, "Sicilians are not Italians," as if I were about to step into the middle of a centuries-old blood feud.