On Being Kinda Scottish

I was a pretty naïve kid.  Leave it to Beaver was right up my alley. My favorite episode was the one where he climbs into the giant, “steaming”  cup of coffee on a billboard. The most frightening program I ever watched was an episode of Wagon Train.  The crusty cook was buried alive and the shot of his hand clawing through the rocks and rubble of his grave scared me for months. 

So it was that I was not as literate as I might have been.  The fact that I grew up in a neighborhood laden with Scottish names and references went right over my head. The main thoroughfares of youth were Hyperion and Rowena.  I lived on Angus Street and went to Ivanhoe Elementary.  I just decided these were rather odd names and gave them no further thought.  I was too busy practicing the flute, watching Lon Chaney Jr. slog through fake fog as the Wolfman and wondering why Jane bothered to wear a dress in the jungle while she was with Tarzan.

Then one day my family went on a trip.  Where we were going, I don’t know.  But on the way we stopped in Carmel, California.  I vividly remember a street sloping towards the sea that had interesting shops on either side.  One of those stores specialized in things Scottish.  Without realizing it, I was hooked.

Why I was attracted to the shop, I have no idea, nor do I know why I was fascinated by a broach that I can still picture.  It was the claw of a bird—a real one--, a purple stone encased in silver and a feather.  Pretty disgusting.  But I wanted it.  I think I was 10 or 11.

Whodathunkit that many years later I would live in Scotland and walk regularly past Sir Walter Scott’s house on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.  And whodathunkit that I would fall in love with a Scotsman who knew that Hyperion and Rowena and Ivanhoe were not just odd names in Silverlake.

The next step was the tartan.  I couldn’t be involved with someone who had one of those orange and yellow plaids that look like the floor of a pub after the last call.   My man had a great one.  It is green and navy, a thin stripe of red and another of yellow. Very close to Hunting Stuart.

The coup de gras came when marriage was on the horizon.  I could “keep my name” as was the fashion or I could “take my husband’s name.”  He didn’t care.  But I did.

My “maiden” name was hellacious for anyone with a lisp.  You try it:  Kristie Smithson.  See.

The chance to have a “Mc” name was too hard to resist. No disrespect to my parents, but my new name just sounds better.