The French have a phrase, “Nostalgie de la boue,” which translates loosely as “nostalgia for the mud-puddle” and is often used to suggest a return to base or primitive behavior.
Both the French and the English involve themselves in a contest over who has the oldest and/or most unassailable pedigree. Such a pedigree comes with its own set of rules governing deportment.
Let me inform all of you now that everyone who is alive today comes from an equally ancient lineage. My family is particularly old. They originated in the primordial ocean as a one-celled organism and, once the Mediterranean or the Black Sea had cooled to room temperature, painstakingly hauled themselves out onto dry land using their gills.
At the time, they probably resembled the cartoon-like modern fish called a “mudskipper.” There was still no language, so they were collectively known as “UMPH,” the sound they had to make when hauling themselves out of the mud.
One French contender who calls himself “Jarl Ale de Basseville” and styles himself as a “Viking prince” calls one of our First Ladies “a nice girl” (oddly paraphrasing the lady’s own husband). Jarl primarily makes his living by taking pictures of models and swears that “ladies love threesomes.” Yo, mudskipper—along with the rest of us…I require all of my subjects to address me as “Your Majesty.”
Instances of my family’s pedigree have followed it into the near-present. We were supposed to have owned a villa in North Italy which, during the 12th century, hosted “The Holy Roman Emperor.” We had an archbishop, and my paternal grandmother’s uncle held some kind of office in the Vatican requiring him to carry the Pope’s comic book—or flyswatter. This is nothing: I always referred to my Aunt Dolores as the last Roman empress.
Why, then, was I unable to buy a co-op on Park Avenue? Why couldn’t I join St. Bart’s Community Club? This is something that still manages to concern me when I have a pain.
The fact remains that, no matter how lengthy your pedigree, you will still have to pay the fare when you get onto a bus or a subway train.—Kathryn Nocerino