Shut Up!

Do you remember the father from My Big Fat Greek Wedding and his famous every-word-has-a-Greek-root lines? Well, that made most people laugh. Others just shook their heads thinking the man is totally wacko. Some others got irritated thinking he’s over the top. For us, he wasn’t that funny and he wasn’t wacko at all, because, well, he’s like the rest of us. Or, even better, we are all like him.

Truth is, we brag. A lot. About our history. About our heritage. About our ancestors. About our language. Almost about everything that is Greek… or about everything that is not but should be. Besides, it’s only ten millions of us. We should brag otherwise noone else will do it for us.

It’s also true that we irritate the fuck out of people when we do that. Well, no wonder about it. Maybe for the first time in years I will admit that we can be arrogant bastards (if publicly asked, I will deny I ever said that). Our most favorite quote seems to be “When we were teaching democracy (“democracy” usually appears in the form of other ideas and sciences, like “psychology”, “philosophy”, “medicine” and so on. The hint remains the same, though), you were still living in caves and building fires” (or hunting your prey to feed or other such variations). Well, I said it before, we can be bad.

So, yesterday I was browsing through some groups on the net. Groups that are set by Greeks, have Greek members. I guess I went very patriotic yesterday. Anyway. So, there is this group, they refer to an assortment of stuff, they have this topic about Greek quotes. It’s a topic about famous lines said by Greeks, or things we say in our language but when translated in English they either make absolutely no sense or they sound totally ridiculous.

And there is this guy. Now, he IS an arrogant bastard. And he enjoys it. He quotes: “When we were teaching philosophy (see what I meant?), you were monkeys climbing up tress” (duh! how original!). So far so good. Or should we think. Because there goes another dude. Now, this second guy, he is not Greek. And apparently he did not appreciate the comment. He did not even think it was funny. It seems that he took personal insult. And decided to react.

Which he did. He joined the group. And responded back making it clear he was referring to the arrogant bastard. Or to all us arrogant bastards. 

“When we were monkeys and climbing up trees, you had cholesterol”.

Call me crazy, call me an idiot, call me anything you wish, I doubt I have laughed so much and so loud in my life before. In fact, I doubt I’ve ever heard “Shut Up” put in better words before. I have the gut feeling that he just flipped us off, but it’s downright hilarious and it serves us right.

One other reason I thought it was hysterical is because, shit, I DO have cholesterol!

Posted by HoneyBunny