Meaghan Chuckran '07

Ethnicity Crush

     I have a little crush on you. Not the romantic kind of crush. No offense, but I wouldn’t kiss you, given the chance. I’m too gracelessly heterosexual for that. But I simply must confess: I have a pretty serious ethnicity crush on you.

     You’re never condescending about it, but there’s this slighter than slight feeling that you know that you’re just a little bit better. You’ve struggled a tiny bit more. Your family has a quirky Christmas tradition that isn’t actually quirky, because it has roots; it has meaning. Dark hair, deep eyes, the slightest hint of an accent, which to be honest, I might imagine because I’m so very in love. Was that an over-enunciated “e” I heard? Did you almost just roll your “r”?

     I’m not even sure exactly where you’re from.

     You move in a way that is so precisely ethnic. I am a little ashamed to walk in your path, for fear that you might see me, and realize that I sometimes claim that I am simply Austrian, only because I don’t like to go through the list. Irish, Italian, Austrian, Polish, Jewish, Native Canadian, French. And God forbid we should take a class together. You’d see my name on the roster and know it was made up at Ellis Island when my ambiguous origins landed themselves on American soil. We can’t all have three perfect syllables, ending poetically in a vowel, and reeking of papusas and enchiladas covered in homemade salsa.

     More than anything else, I love you because you’re little. You don’t really make noise when you walk, unless you wear heeled shoes, which you do often, because you can. You never tower over much of anyone, and people stand in awe of the constant applause your heels give your body. “I. Have. Ancestors.” Your feet clap rhythmically. I meanwhile plod along in my sneakers, pausing only to tie my non-verbal shoes.

     I don’t want you to think that I’m jealous of you. This isn’t a case of wanting to be you. It is, at its very core, a crush. I am infatuated with your ancestry, smitten with your lineage. I know I couldn’t pull it off – I trip in heels. Instead, I prefer to bask in the rays of your ethnicity, thinking maybe I’ll soak up all that is enviable about you to return to later when I’m feeling a little culturally insufficient.

     So as you walk down the hall, bear in mind those of us who are ethnically challenged. Throw a bone my way and mention something your family does, or your trip home to visit your grandparents, and be sure to emphasize that you took a plane to get there. I’ll be dazzled, star struck every time. I will walk away dreaming of being able to refer in a serious way to my roots. But don’t worry about me; this is just the nature of an ethnicity crush.