Being an exotic Northerner

At work today, we saw a picture of a colleague who is on holiday in Scotland, where these days it is cold and snowy. In April. And there was a good deal of snow on the picture. My colleagues joked about it, saying his family sure wished they'd be in Spain or Italy now. They were freezing just looking at the picture. But I said I didn't mind this kind of weather. In April. So one of my colleagues said: "Oh, of course, because you are Canadian" (they seem to be making a big deal of me being Canadian these days). I said: "I was literally born in this kind of weather, in April". They teased me a bit ("what, outside, in the storm, like this?" and so on). One of them said something funny enough to qualify as a great unknown line: "Raised by wolves, he was." It made me laugh anyway, and even if it was teasing I do wish it was a true, I do think people perceive me as coming from a savage Northern land.

But it is absolutely almost true: if when I was born it was a summery day, very warm, even hot, a few days later, when I left hospital, there was a snow storm. It is a story my mother loves to tell. I think I may have told it here on Vraie Fiction already. But growing up in the North did mark me and I think I do think it also had an influence on the perception people have of me. Here it is exotic, almost Scottish.