Wednesday, May 09, 2007

My Little Leprechaun


We have this running family joke that I wanted to share with all of you. Matthew was 5 and it was St. Patrick's Day, and he went to the airport to go to work with Dominick that afternoon. As he is walking in, an Asian TSA agent who didn't know our family approached Dominick and looked at him, obviously puzzled. He asked Dominick "Is this your son?" and Dominick said "Yes", and after a moment's pause the gentleman asked "Is your wife Chinese?" and Dominick said "No" and nothing else, quite enjoying the man's obvious disconnect about Matt's adoption. Finally the man seemed to understand and looked at Matthew and asked "Where are you from?" and Matthew looked up with a dead pan expression and replied:
"Ireland"
And then he casually walked away...leaving the poor man even more confused than he was to start with!
When Dominick told me about it that evening I laughed so hard it brought tears to my eyes. Well, recently there was another addition to this saga. We found this $3 shirt after St. Paddy's day and couldn't pass it up, as it reminded us of this funny event that has become part of our family lore, and Matt begged to have it. So we got it. Then just a few days later our sweet friends who bought clothes for Tokie called up, and were describing what they bought, and then explained that they had found a hoodie discounted so cheap they went ahead and got it but that we might think it was weird because it said "I love Ireland" on it with a shamrock in place of the heart. They were unaware of this little story in our family, and I busted out laughing as I shared it with her, and said it was a PERFECT hoodie for our crazy, ethnically challenged family.
Yes, we are an odd little group, my Kazakh-American Leprechauns and I! There are moments I feel sorry for little Tokie, the poor kid has NO idea what he is in for when he joins this silly bunch!

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