Dad's sad to be reminded he's not Irish

Dear Uncle Wayne,

St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and you know what THAT means.

Chances are good you're gonna get a phone call from my dad, which will go something like this.

Dad: Hey, Wayne. Are you sure we're not Irish?

You: We've had this conversation before. More than once, actually.

Dad: Does this mean you're going to tell me we're not Irish again?

You: Pretty much.

Dad: But how do you know that for sure?

You: Ummm. Because I'm the brother who does family history? And you're the brother who golfs?

Dad: I wish I were in Ireland right now. Golfing.

You know how he is. Your brother (my father) loves all things Irish. Hum a few bars of "Danny Boy," and he gets all choked up.

Dude just CANNOT help himself. Which is why it makes him SO! SAD! that he's English, Scottish and Welsh.

But not Irish.

It's very true that people like to know where their people originally came from.

Witness the popularity of the new NBC show "Who Do You Think You Are," wherein famous people like Sarah Jessica Parker find out they're related to Puritan ladies who worked the red carpet wearing Chanel gowns and scary wiglets at the Salem witch trials.

Judge: I hereby sentence thee to burn at the stake for wearing scary wiglets!

In fact, people often define themselves based on their ancestry.

My husband, for example, is proud of his old Utah Mormon roots, while I, myself, could have died from happiness in the third grade when my maternal grandma told me that one of our great-great-greats was Native American.

And seriously, I was beyond THRILLED when I learned that another ancestor came from Australia.

AUSTRALIA!

Did that mean I have actual WICKED COOL penal-colony blood?

(The answer is no. Unfortunately, I don't. My people were merely passing through New South Wales, because you know how ancestors are. Sometimes they just want to take the long way to America.)