I'm afraid this diary may insult both dog lovers and Irishmen
but hey, that's never stopped me yet!
Our son was a handsome boy and Whitley and I are, well, a
bit challenged in that department, although I'm a lot less so
now that I've lost 100 pounds. During one summer, two
different people (who didn't know each other) said the exact
same words to us when they saw us with our son: "How did a
couple like you ever have a child like Andrew?" They were
just trying to start a conversation, but I knew darn well what
they meant.
Around that time, I went to my doctor for a minor problem.
We were chatting during the exam, and since he deals with
physical bodies, I thought he would be amused if I told him
this story. He laughed, wiggled his eyebrows and said, "Is
that due to the Irish milkman?"
I suppose I could have been insulted, but I actually thought
it was funny. He was referring to the fact that, around a
hundred and fifty years ago, a large number of Irish
immigrated to the US, due to the potato blight in their
country, with the result that almost everyone here whose
family goes back several generations here has some Irish in
them.
The Irish are charming, and suddenly you had a large number
of strong, handsome, lads, with that musical way of talking,
doing menial jobs like delivering milk to lonely housewives and,
well, things happened.
These thoughts were sparked by the fact that I received an
email advertisement for a "Dog DNA Kit." Presumably, you
swab your dog's mouth, send the swab to this company
(along with some money) and receive a report telling you
which breeds make up your mutt (you wouldn't need to do
this with a pedigreed dog).
I bet I can guess ONE of the breeds that will be in every one
of these reports: The Dachshund.
Whitley and I have often remarked that almost every mixed-
breed dog we see seems to be long. I got to thinking about
the logistics of this one day and realized they would be
pretty complex: A Dachshund would have to get up on a
stool in order to impregnate most other breeds of dogs. And
yet, somehow, they seem to have done it, time and time
again.
That's why I call them the Irish milkmen of the dog world.
I had a Dachshund once and found him a charming fellow, but
he would dash across the street, regardless of traffic, in
order to greet a child. Our son was away at school at the
time, so I realized I needed to give our dog to a family with
young children in it, and I found one for him.
I have an Irishman in my life too, and he's a charming fellow
as well, with the typical golden tongue of that breed.
Whitley may have a German last name, but he's a typical
American mutt with lots of Irish genes. Nobody in his family
had an Irish brogue (they'd been in Texas too long for that),
but he remembers his grandfather singing the Irish ballad "I'll
take you home again, Kathleen," to his grandmother (whose
name was Kathleen).
Interestingly enough, when we looked through the last names
of the hundreds of thousands of letters we received from
contactees and abductees, after Whitley wrote "Communion,"
we found that they were predominantly Irish!
From reading all those letters, I learned that UFO contact
runs in family, but maybe it also runs in our DNA. It's an
interesting thought, anyway.
UPDATE: Most of us HUMANS are "mutts" as well. Few of us
are "purebred." President Obama calls himself a "mutt." I just
learned that the Hawaiian term for a human mutt who was
born in Hawaii (as Obama was) is "poi dog."
Related Entries:
10-Nov-2009: On NOT Going to a Movie about UFOs
20-Oct-2009: The Laughing Buddha
11-Oct-2009: The Red Coat
22-Sep-2009: Four Days
07-Sep-2009: Portents, Synchronicities (and Coincidences?)
27-Aug-2009: Two Birthdays
12-Aug-2009: Held Hostage by Hummingbirds
27-Jul-2009: Two Surprising Events
29-Jun-2009: Trickster Coyote
08-Jun-2009: Tool Users
