to you and me that's jingletown, that's home

When I went to Ireland with my family, just about the first thing my brother and I did was try to convince innocent Irish people that we were Canadian. I have no idea why this happened (although the overnight flight from New York, which left at 10 PM EST and landed at 4 AM EST...which is 9 AM Ireland time...and the absolute lack of sleep on that flight may have had something to do with it), but we walked all around Shannon Airport yelling "EH" and talking about the Edmonton Oilers, in the hopes that someone would mistake us for Canadians. I think we also talked in southern accents (terrible, terrible southern accents) and did Fargo impressions for a little while, and then I passed the fuck out on a bench for an hour and a half. I don't think we convinced anybody of anything, besides that we were complete jackasses even for Americans.

Right now I'm wearing an Oakland Athletics hat. I have four baseball caps in regular rotation, for teams based in Pittsburgh, Boston, San Francisco, and now Oakland, plus a Minnesota Twins one that has been sporadically important in my life (plus my Pens hat, but that's separate). When I wore my Sox hat the other day, this kid on my floor told me I was being a disgrace to San Francisco, and I had to stop and explain to him that I'm not actually from California, even though I ran down the hall whooping it up with my friend who is when the Giants won the World Series. Before that, I wore my Giants hat to the newspaper office, with a Pirates shirt, and got the Spanish Inquisition into why the hell I would ever wear a Giants hat (also got the question "is it Barry Bonds Day?" No, sir, it is never, ever, ever Barry Bonds Day in my life, and you're lucky I didn't slap you for saying so).

I guess there's a definite thread of me wanting people to think I'm from places I'm not from, even though I love where I actually am from (more so now that I don't have to be there year-round). It's just more interesting that way. I mean, I have a reasonable claim to Boston now (I can navigate the city much, much better than I can Pittsburgh, which is a source of guilt) but I just like walking down the street, seeing people notice my hats and think of me as a Californian, or a Minnesotan, or a Chicagoan the times I wear my Blackhawks shirt, and so forth. I want to know what it's like to be from everywhere, how you think of yourself if you're from Wisconsin or Florida or New York or New Mexico, what people want to convey when they identify themselves with one place or another. I personally feel connected to a whole lot of places; hence, the hats.

That's why I got back into sports in the first place, you know - wanting something to connect me back to Pittsburgh. Going into junior year, I was starting to think, and be concerned by the thought, that I could go to school - let's say - in New York and have nothing to distinguish me from people from Cincinnati, or Kansas City, or what have you. And people always expected me to pay attention to hockey, since I play, and I thought sure, I'll just become loyal to the Penguins, and that will be that. The rest is history, obviously, but sometimes I realize that's about the weirdest damn reason to get into something in the world. It worked, though. When I think of home I think of Mellon Arena (rest in peace, old buddy) and PNC Park (you'll see better days, I promise) and walking across the Clemente Bridge in the summer with my family, standing in a crowd of 375,000 Penguins fans on the Boulevard of the Allies celebrating this thing we believe in on June 15, 2009. They don't have that shit in Philly or Dallas. That's just home.