Kilt-y as charged

Editor's note: Another Canadian experience that bears--or do I mean "bares"?--sharing.

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Sometimes even I try to be on my best behavior. And, naturally, at these moments I'm tested sorely by the wicked sprites of quirkiness and the bitter gnomes of absurdity.

I was at a lunch with some Canadian colleagues recently, neighbors to the North who I didn't know very well, so as I said, best behavior and all that. Thus, no "eh?" comments, no references to Kids in the Hall ("I'm crushing your head!"), no questions about Patsy Gallant's post-"From New York to L.A." career, no making fun of British-Canadian English spellings ("tonnes"?) or pronunciations ("sheduling" as opposed to the American "skeduling"). In short, I was sweeter than maple candy, more flattering than Anne Murray's highlighted, permed hair, and cuter and cuddlier than Bonhomme, that preternaturally cheery snowman who serves as the mascot for Carnaval de Québec.

Gotta start somewhere. Gotta start sometime.

Ow! Was that a devious wood nymph of bizarreness clubbing my ankles with a golf club?

For, suddenly, the university cafeteria was filled with men in kilts. Kilts! All sorts of plaids, all sorts of clan colors. Big burly working men and weedy academic types, otherwise looking like their usual selves (I'm assuming), but now wearing kilts, entirely unself-consciously, in the bright light of heating lamps. While I, a bitchy goblin of irony, stood there in a jacket and tie feeling totally self-conscious, trying to make up my mind between the chicken panini or the vegetarian pasta, and to keep my sense of humor far away from the skirted gentleman ladling mulligatawny next to me.

Ah, for me, a day without feeling out of time, out of place, is like a day without sunshine . . . or indecision.

Nonetheless, I didn't say a thing, pursing my lips tighter than Jerry Falwell's . . . oh, let's not go there. I ignored the husky thighs and hairy calves and knobby knees and the burning, yearning question of the day--"What does a Canadian Scotsman use to get soup stains out of his tartan?" But through all the temptations--physical, visceral, tangential, and whismical--I kept my mouth shut.

Finally, though, one of my lunch companions mentioned the 500-pound (or, if you prefer, 226.8-kilogram), brogue-speaking gorilla in the room.

"Why is everyone wearing kilts?" she said.

The other companion responded, "I don't know, maybe it's because of the Scottish Festival this weekend in Fergus," a neighboring Ontario town.

"Oh good," I said. "I was beginning to worry that there was some sort of 'Casual Kilt Friday' policy in place here."

Out of place, yes, indecisive, perhaps, but not too much of either that I can't still be obnoxious in a foreign land.