How to Become a Greek
My English essay.
I'll revise it on Sunday when I get home and take any comments here into consideration.
The prompt: To entertain and perhaps inform or persuade, write an essay with the title, "How to Become a/an ______." (Fill in the black with something other than a campus "type.") Try your hand at verbal irony.
(This is the alternative prompt, the first one is to write about becoming a campus "type" ie athlete, sorority girl, instructor, etc.)
1,000 word min, I clocked in at about 1,071.
How to Become a Greek
It is impossible to be a solitary Greek. All Greeks are surrounded by a Greek family; it’s what makes them Greek. A singular Greek is a hermit, and we just don’t have those. So obviously the first step toward becoming a Greek is to get yourself a good Greek family. This isn’t as hard as it may seem. You can start by scoping out your local Greek Orthodox Church for families that look promising.
Greek families come in all shapes but only one size: huge. This can give your relatives very unwieldy descriptions, but that’s all right; if you’re Greek you’re perfectly allowed to refer to your mother’s cousin’s niece’s husband’s stepsister’s aunt as your cousin. We’ll all know who you’re talking about.
Despite the large family sizes, everyone’s name is Athena, Diane, Nick, or George. You may occasionally get a Toula. This is rare. Treasure it.
The two easiest methods to get yourself adopted into a Greek family are to either marry a Greek or get a Greek best friend.
Marrying a Greek may seem like a simple concept, but it can be very complicated in practice. Once you’ve found the person you’ve got in mind, you’ll have to convince them to marry you. After you’ve managed that, you’ll have to convince their parents to let you marry them. This can be especially difficult when dealing with parents from the old country (otherwise known as Greek immigrants). This type of parent would prefer their bloodline stay inside their ethnicity; as such they will tend to greatly disapprove of their children marrying non-Greeks. You’ll have to prove yourself to them.
The best way to prove that you’re serious about becoming Greek is to convert to Greek Orthodox. It’s a huge step, but if you’re really intent on being Greek, you’ll have to do it at some point anyway. Your prospective spouse’s parents will be so impressed that you’ll pretty much cinch the deal with them right there!
Converting can be a little embarrassing, but once you get over the fact that the priest is pouring oil over your head while you’re sitting in a wading pool in the middle of the church in front of you friends and family, it’s not so bad.
After that, you’re free to marry into your very own Greek family!
But say you don’t want to get married. Well, you can just adopt a family then! Find a Greek in your age group and become their best friend. It’s almost automatic! Just come over for dinner once or twice and you’ll practically be a member of the family already! You’ll get invited to all the family functions, if only because your friend no longer needs to suffer alone.
Once you’ve got the family, you can work on the rest of what being Greek entails. Mostly it entails talking loudly enough for anybody in a one mile radius to hear and having no idea what an “inside voice” sounds like. Make sure to forget the societal rules on when it is and isn’t appropriate to talk about certain things, too. Tell perfect strangers your life story. It’s okay, you can do that, you’re Greek! When you eat out and have to order something special made because you have some condition or other, feel free to explain your complete diagnosis to the waiter, they’re sure to find it fascinating.
You also need to pick out two or three personal anecdotes that you will relate constantly. Forget who you’ve already told, and when people try to stop you, tell them it’s different and they haven’t heard it before. Greeks have awful memories for this sort of thing, even if you have already told it you’d best tell it again because they’ve probably already forgotten.
When you get invited over for holidays, expect to see the entire extended family. This includes Easter (orthodox type, which is entirely different from regular Easter but nobody quite knows why), New Year’s Eve parties, and Labor Day.
When attending family functions, get ready to have every ancient Greek aunt in the family strangle you in a hug; don’t worry, you’ll get used to the mustaches after the first few times you get your cheeks kissed. You won’t know anybody, but everyone will seem to know who you are: so-and-so’s granddaughter/grandson or son/daughter’s friend/husband/wife/plumber/veterinarian/etc. Consider yourself lucky, though. The Greeks who were born into the family will be pretending to know relatives they haven’t seen since they were babies.
Greek Easter is one of the biggest family events of the year. Somebody’s grandmother always throws a party that may as well be a family reunion and every Greek in the county will come. Even though it’s technically Orthodox Easter, it’s called Greek Easter because the Greek Orthodox faith must be the only one that celebrates it.
Greeks make Easter egg dyeing into a very simple process. Normal Easters will have you spending days painstakingly painting dozens of eggs in bright, cheerful patterns. Not so for the Greeks! They only dye their eggs one colour: plain red. There’s a perfectly good Biblical reason for this, but nobody will ever seem to be able to explain it to your satisfaction.
Every Greek function includes a full meal. This includes funerals, wakes (which aren’t called wakes), weekly church services, baptisms, and any gathering of more than three Greeks in the same place at the same time. If you leave from any Greek function hungry, then something is horribly wrong.
Speaking of food, there are three things you absolutely must love in order to be truly Greek: feta, olives, and lamb. It’s okay if you’re a vegetarian, you’re a Greek so lamb counts as a vegetable. Get ready for it, because you’ll be eating it all the time. It shows up at every function.
The Greeks invented everything, and therefore are the superior race. Anything invented by a non-Greek was inspired by something a Greek said. Likewise, all words are rooted in the Greek language. If you come across actors, musicians, politicians, or any otherwise notable figure who just happens to be Greek, it is your duty as a Greek person to point this out to the people surrounding you, whether or not they already know. Assume they don’t.
But you’re not truly Greek until somebody you’ve never seen before comes up to you at a social gathering, assumes your name is Nick, and proceeds to talk to you like they’ve known you for years.
Welcome to the family, Nick. Enjoy your lamb.
I'll revise it on Sunday when I get home and take any comments here into consideration.
The prompt: To entertain and perhaps inform or persuade, write an essay with the title, "How to Become a/an ______." (Fill in the black with something other than a campus "type.") Try your hand at verbal irony.
(This is the alternative prompt, the first one is to write about becoming a campus "type" ie athlete, sorority girl, instructor, etc.)
1,000 word min, I clocked in at about 1,071.
How to Become a Greek
It is impossible to be a solitary Greek. All Greeks are surrounded by a Greek family; it’s what makes them Greek. A singular Greek is a hermit, and we just don’t have those. So obviously the first step toward becoming a Greek is to get yourself a good Greek family. This isn’t as hard as it may seem. You can start by scoping out your local Greek Orthodox Church for families that look promising.
Greek families come in all shapes but only one size: huge. This can give your relatives very unwieldy descriptions, but that’s all right; if you’re Greek you’re perfectly allowed to refer to your mother’s cousin’s niece’s husband’s stepsister’s aunt as your cousin. We’ll all know who you’re talking about.
Despite the large family sizes, everyone’s name is Athena, Diane, Nick, or George. You may occasionally get a Toula. This is rare. Treasure it.
The two easiest methods to get yourself adopted into a Greek family are to either marry a Greek or get a Greek best friend.
Marrying a Greek may seem like a simple concept, but it can be very complicated in practice. Once you’ve found the person you’ve got in mind, you’ll have to convince them to marry you. After you’ve managed that, you’ll have to convince their parents to let you marry them. This can be especially difficult when dealing with parents from the old country (otherwise known as Greek immigrants). This type of parent would prefer their bloodline stay inside their ethnicity; as such they will tend to greatly disapprove of their children marrying non-Greeks. You’ll have to prove yourself to them.
The best way to prove that you’re serious about becoming Greek is to convert to Greek Orthodox. It’s a huge step, but if you’re really intent on being Greek, you’ll have to do it at some point anyway. Your prospective spouse’s parents will be so impressed that you’ll pretty much cinch the deal with them right there!
Converting can be a little embarrassing, but once you get over the fact that the priest is pouring oil over your head while you’re sitting in a wading pool in the middle of the church in front of you friends and family, it’s not so bad.
After that, you’re free to marry into your very own Greek family!
But say you don’t want to get married. Well, you can just adopt a family then! Find a Greek in your age group and become their best friend. It’s almost automatic! Just come over for dinner once or twice and you’ll practically be a member of the family already! You’ll get invited to all the family functions, if only because your friend no longer needs to suffer alone.
Once you’ve got the family, you can work on the rest of what being Greek entails. Mostly it entails talking loudly enough for anybody in a one mile radius to hear and having no idea what an “inside voice” sounds like. Make sure to forget the societal rules on when it is and isn’t appropriate to talk about certain things, too. Tell perfect strangers your life story. It’s okay, you can do that, you’re Greek! When you eat out and have to order something special made because you have some condition or other, feel free to explain your complete diagnosis to the waiter, they’re sure to find it fascinating.
You also need to pick out two or three personal anecdotes that you will relate constantly. Forget who you’ve already told, and when people try to stop you, tell them it’s different and they haven’t heard it before. Greeks have awful memories for this sort of thing, even if you have already told it you’d best tell it again because they’ve probably already forgotten.
When you get invited over for holidays, expect to see the entire extended family. This includes Easter (orthodox type, which is entirely different from regular Easter but nobody quite knows why), New Year’s Eve parties, and Labor Day.
When attending family functions, get ready to have every ancient Greek aunt in the family strangle you in a hug; don’t worry, you’ll get used to the mustaches after the first few times you get your cheeks kissed. You won’t know anybody, but everyone will seem to know who you are: so-and-so’s granddaughter/grandson or son/daughter’s friend/husband/wife/plumber/veterinarian/etc. Consider yourself lucky, though. The Greeks who were born into the family will be pretending to know relatives they haven’t seen since they were babies.
Greek Easter is one of the biggest family events of the year. Somebody’s grandmother always throws a party that may as well be a family reunion and every Greek in the county will come. Even though it’s technically Orthodox Easter, it’s called Greek Easter because the Greek Orthodox faith must be the only one that celebrates it.
Greeks make Easter egg dyeing into a very simple process. Normal Easters will have you spending days painstakingly painting dozens of eggs in bright, cheerful patterns. Not so for the Greeks! They only dye their eggs one colour: plain red. There’s a perfectly good Biblical reason for this, but nobody will ever seem to be able to explain it to your satisfaction.
Every Greek function includes a full meal. This includes funerals, wakes (which aren’t called wakes), weekly church services, baptisms, and any gathering of more than three Greeks in the same place at the same time. If you leave from any Greek function hungry, then something is horribly wrong.
Speaking of food, there are three things you absolutely must love in order to be truly Greek: feta, olives, and lamb. It’s okay if you’re a vegetarian, you’re a Greek so lamb counts as a vegetable. Get ready for it, because you’ll be eating it all the time. It shows up at every function.
The Greeks invented everything, and therefore are the superior race. Anything invented by a non-Greek was inspired by something a Greek said. Likewise, all words are rooted in the Greek language. If you come across actors, musicians, politicians, or any otherwise notable figure who just happens to be Greek, it is your duty as a Greek person to point this out to the people surrounding you, whether or not they already know. Assume they don’t.
But you’re not truly Greek until somebody you’ve never seen before comes up to you at a social gathering, assumes your name is Nick, and proceeds to talk to you like they’ve known you for years.
Welcome to the family, Nick. Enjoy your lamb.