Who do you think you are? A personal quirk

Warning: broad generalizations ahead. Yes there are areas/classes in both countries where it is very different! And blogs to prove it! I admit already that this is deeply flawed! :-) 

The lovely and gifted J. (hey you) commented a while back:

You often say things like this [I had said not to be overly joyful about something to do with Noah, meaning overly publicly joyful], and I’ve always meant to ask — why on earth would it sound *awful* to be happy about having kids?

I’m going to work this one through literature. I think I heard all this in an interview with Alice Munro herself but I may have picked it up from someone’s great essay and be completely poaching it; I dunno. It’s floating about my head.

In Canada Alice Munro’s Booker Prize-nominated collection of short stories was titled Who Do You Think You Are? And that really summed it up, because in the town where Munro lived -and many Canadians lived – and her characters lived – that was a phrase that was totally recognizable.  Being too big for your britches, to use a slightly more Americanized phrase, really is a vital social error in Canada. 

(If our Prime Minister ever said “Bring it on!” to some other country or great big organization, as if we were, you know, more powerful or better than them, Canadians would collectively expire in mortification.)

In the US publishers in their wisdom decided no one would be attracted to a title like that and renamed it The Beggar Maid. It just didn’t culturally scan the same way, because in the US having a dream and thinking big are unabashedly good things.

In the US, people have bumper stickers proclaiming that their children are honours students, and grandparents and others carry around “brag books” which are actually labelled – err – “Brag Books.”  And my American relatives have generously sent me a slew of baby clothes that say “#1 Boy!” or things of the sort. They are not really available here in the same way. (There are the odd few that come up through Wal-Mart.)

So although this is slowly percolating into Canadian culture, the fact is that if you walk into Hallmark here and look for a little photo album or a frame to give, you will likely not find very many, if any that proclaim “#1 Grandson!” (!!!ELEVENTY ONE!!!) all over it. If so though, they will be cheap and on sale.

People don’t have bumper stickers much anyway – but if they did about their kids they would probably say “we’re so glad our kid is doing all right!”

The vague social more about bragging, you see, sort of is the more important the thing is to you/the greater the accomplishment, the more you have to downplay it.  So if you’re Canadian you can brag about finding a great bargain at Winners any day. But not so much about your car or your house – and never about your child prodigy, or your own Nobel Peace Prize.

(I actually love this about Canadian writers because it means that even though they are internally the same as anyone else and really are glad if their books do well and better than someone else’s or win medals or whatever, they have to externally be humble, and so Alistair Macleod (who is really just a very generous soul anyway, I think) has to come and be nice to us beginning writers and write nice things on our manuscripts. When Alice Munro was writing that collection though, it was a social faux pas to BE a Canadian writer because that was being mouthy and arrogant already.) 

Of course people find a way to revel in pride and accomplishments anyway. Canadians are just as braggy about not bragging as people who are braggy about glorying in their bragging. These are subtle shades of communication, not some comment on the Canadian soul.  And that’s exactly the thing about Alice Munro’s title – Who Do You Think You Are? It passes judgement -  but who is the speaker to judge, etc. etc.

It may be the snow that makes Canadians like this, I don’t know.

When I was growing up this social difference between white middle class upstate NY and white middle class Toronto caused many awkward moments, because my American parents had many pictures of their own children around their home and videos of our medal-winning performances and didn’t hesitate to take a bright and loud pride in our academic accomplishments. 

Where the Canadian parents certainly got across the same thing, but in more muted tones. And they managed to get across, too, that it was so delightful that my parents took their children’s little accomplishments to heart.  I don’t think my parents ever got the irony. They still don’t, in bragging about Noah. (Although grandparent bragging seems slightly more tolerated, since it is at a bit more of a remove.)

So that’s why; I think it’s really just a cultural thing. Of course bi-cultural me, I have a blog full of Noah-y goodness… along with some phrases to ward off the evil eye of the snow queen. :-)