Kilty-Caul-Bum

It is called a “Proustian phenomenon,” when a smell brings back distant memories. Look it up — it involves Marcel Proust and some tea biscuits. My current Proustian flashback is because my house smells like corned beef and cabbage right now, and my memory just belly-laughed at the time we went downtown to watch little Ginger walk in the Paddy’s Day parade with her friend Colleen.

Colleen invited Ginger to walk with her family and her grandfather’s Irish Social Club. And Colleen’s mother hatched a plan that would get the girls noticed by the television cameras: Dress them in cute costumes that can be seen from a distance.

So Sheila and I cut giant shamrocks from leftover carpet padding, and spray-painted them green. And that’s what our little second-grade daughters wore in the 1990 Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade. And sure and begorra, they were noticed, the dears. By the Chicago Tribune, as well as the television cameras! This is their photo on the front page of the Trib, March 18, 1990.

But that’s not the funny part. This is the funny part…

A ginger-haired young man, still dressed in his kilt, had apparently marched with his pipe and drum corps, and had circled back to walk with his wife, who was pushing a baby stroller. ‘Twas a brisk day in Chicago, ’twas. And me sitting on the curb a-waiting to spy me own chiseller all dressed like a shamrock, so. The little family paused right in front of me. The baby was fussy. So the kilted young daddy bent over to coo at his bitty wee “babby.” A chilly breeze came up, and so did the daddy’s fine tartan. He didn’t even notice my squeal, or the colorful exclamation of the sistah sitting next to me. He just walked on, pleased to be Irish in Chicago.

I can confirm two things.

They wear nothing under their kilts.

And he was a natural redhead.