Kilt Day 2014

Saint Patrick's Day wasn't cancelled due to snow. Carrie cooked red cabbage, potatoes, and corned beef to fuel me up to wear my kilt the day after!

Tuesday, March 18th Kilt Day 2014 was upon us! Belated, but not forgotten. The tradition is now six years strong.

Originally, I was afraid I would have to skip it. Tuesday was supposed to be an SOL test day. I didn't want to cause a "man in skirt" testing irregularity. The snow caused a two-hour delay, however, and the test periods were moved to Thursday.

I surprised Carrie by bounding downstairs in kilt hose and kilt. She loves Kilt Day more than anyone! She said, "Watch Shane!" and ran off to find my sporran and any other accessory necessities I'd forgotten.

The day went much as Kilt Days go. Middle school brains were blown. I played it a little more gruff this year. If a student said they liked my 'outfit' I replied, "Outfit? Outfit!? This is a KILT!" Sometimes I substituted Kilt with "MAN skirt" (emphasis on MAN!). If a student asked why I was wearing it I might have said "Because I can" or "I have the knees for it." It's all in good fun.

The kids this year were more tactful than most. They'd usually wait until they were around the corner to react. I'd start each class with the usual kilt history lesson. "First off, this isn't an Irish kilt; it's Scottish. Irish kilts are usually uni-color and not as old a tradition. Scottish kilts are the tartan pattern. They can show your affiliation to your clan, a region, a city, or a number of other things. The Black Watch have their own tartan patterns. The Irish regiments actually have their own patterns and pipers, too."

My history lesson normally meanders from there. One kid normally asks if I play the bagpipes ("No. I have no musical talent. Next."). Another will ask if I can dance a jig ("Nope. Can't dance," or "Irish dancers don't wear kilts and I don't know anything about Scottish line dancing.") A kid who listened and was interested will ask something like "If you're Irish why are you wearing a Scottish kilt?" At this point, I mention some things I learned from Uncle Jim's research about the other Irish names in the family and how it was probably a displaced Scottsman who was imported by the British into northern Ireland who gave me my name (since it is clearly Scottish, but there's no other traceable link to Scottland in my ancestry). I try to go light on the me and bring up names in history for any kid who's interested enough to Google. I'm a history nerd, so it's nice to talk about history some.

The staff reactions are always fun, too. I had a teacher tell me that kilt day was her "favorite day of the year," I heard kilts at wedding stories from other teachers, and I even wiki'd a couple of last names of my co-teachers for five minutes at the end of the day ("Watch out for Heather! Her clan used to rule over yours!).

All in all, it was a successful Kilt Day. I find it funny how different I look from the last one. Carrie wanted me to grow my hair out to see what it'd look like. The last time I think I was photographed in a kilt, I looked like this at family picture day! Nana loved it.