I would here like to focus on my family's Lithuanian heritage. It should explain a lot. While the Grand Duchy of Lithuania once covered almost all of northern Europe, it has shrunk considerably since then and is now nestled between Poland and Latvia on the Baltic coast. Across the Baltic are Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Lithuania shares a coastline with Denmark and Germany.

We've had to tolerate the ambitions of both Germany and Russia. However, our relationship with our neighbors to the north and across the Baltic must have been more amorous. “Pure” Lithuanians aren't all that large, but somehow many of us have become rather husky, resembling the Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, and Finns.

Many see us as rough-hewn loggers, construction workers, tradesmen, and industrial artists. We are known to be stubborn and impulsive and to have an unusually high tolerance to cold weather and, like the Russians and Poles, adversity in general.

This latter trait is a fortunate thing. We are really poets, musicologists, inventors, theoretical physicists, horticulturists, and eggheads in general. However, we often languish in lesser stations due to an inherent unwillingness to cooperate and accept the established order of things. (This may not be an impractical outlook these days, as “the box” seems to be collapsing). The typical Lithuanian American is where Thomas Edison meets Peter Tsychcofski, Leo Tolstoy, and Ole Svensen. We often do things the hard way just to have had the experience.

I've here compiled some traits, tendencies, and situations that may indicate one's being afflicted with Lithuanian-ness. Typically, the least believable of these are the most likely to be true. They are derived from my own experience, old family history, and even from special “Lithuanian Moments” wherein I noticed these national tendencies in my children.

You Might Be Lithuanian If . . .

As your boss is bellowing at you, you imagine him in costume, singing an aria from Othello—then quit. (me)

The transmission in your car once belonged to your grandfather. (cousin Ray, et al)

(. . . or Polish) You attended special counseling sessions when Frankie Yankovic died.

You insist that FrankieYankovic, Elvis Presley, and Al Jolson were all Lithuanian. (Dad)

You know that Al Jolson actually was Lithuanian! (me—Alabammy, my foot)

You argue with a stop sign. (Grandpa, Dad, uncles Vick and Pete, 1949 Allis Chalmers WC tractor)

You think that St. Valentine's Day was enacted by the Knights of Columbus to honor Al Capone.

Your town's citizen to bar ratio is 20:1 or less—extra points if bars favor. (greetings, Manville, NJ!) (editor/website guru's note: this may also explain why I lived contentedly in Morgantown, WV, for nearly six years)

At the Jersey Shore, the lifeguard keeps blowing his whistle at you—you've been floating upstream, against the current. (daughter Emily)

You devise a brilliant plan to assassinate the Czar of Russia but blow up the wrong train car. (great grandfather Theodore—or so the story goes. Different branches of the family give other reasons for his execution by a Russian firing squad)

Your 4th of July fireworks send shrapnel through the town constable's roof. (Grandpa, circa 1930, Buffalo Creek, WV—are you sensing a pattern here?)

You attempt to make a diamond with carbon, a C-clamp, and a blowtorch, plow a field with a 1953 DeSoto, and launch a space probe from a shotgun—all in the same day.

You get your car's front end computer aligned and then take it home and “do it right.” (uncle Vick)

Because your last name ends with the letter “s” your neighbors all think that you're Greek . . . until they see you walk out to your mailbox in a t-shirt and cut-offs at ten below and stand there for twenty minutes reading the Northern Hydraulics catalog. (me, et al) [note from the editor, a.k.a. “daughter Jessi”: I spent most of the winter of 2008/09 working in an overheated restaurant kitchen within easy walking distance of my home. Rather than change clothing both before and after a fifteen minute hike through icy streets, I regularly wore cargo shorts to, from, and at work. On at least one occasion I noted the temperature at six degrees Fahrenheit. My friends and coworkers thought I was insane—now I can tell them it's just my genetic heritage!]

You think that South Jersey is a Sunbelt State. (it isn't?)

Your innovative gardening techniques bring the fire department and the S.W.A.T. team. (daughter Leah)

Your grade school principal is chewing you out for contradicting a teacher and you calmly correct his grammar. (daughter Jessi)

You own a vast tool collection and know exactly which tools can double as bottle openers. (me)

You closely inspect, study the minute details, nuances and specific subtle tendencies . . . of a tornado.

You grow huge frogs in your pond that escape and infest the entire watershed. (uncle Pete)

When you see an abandoned manure spreader in a field, you grease it and give each steel wheel a half turn to keep them from rusting in the mud. (me)

If you run over a rabbit, squirrel, or deer, it winds up in your freezer. (cousin Peter, me)

Your dandelions become wine and the fallen apples from your orchard become whiskey, but a funeral wake still requires two kegs of Schafer. (uncle Vick, et al)

Out on the bay in a rowboat, a rescue cruiser shouts something at you from a bullhorn and then heads for shore because of rough seas. You go on fishing. (Dad, cousin Peter, me. Hey, we were pulling them in!)

You eat blowfish that you caught in the bay all winter, though aware of the deadly “fugu effect.” That only happens to the Japanese because they eat them raw, you know. (Dad, me, et al)

You find a termite in your basement, but on closer inspection you determine that it's really a new species of winged ant. End of problem. (so went the old farmhouse)

You live in an old school bus. But it has a machine shop.

The distant pop of a two-cylinder John Deere brings forth the comment “Must be one of those Dutch farmers.” (There is some validity to this statement. I recall that Lithuanians, Poles, Norwegians, and Swedes preferred Allis Chalmers, Farmall, and Massey-Harris, while the Dutch were content to “pop on” with the old green and yellow. Fords were for Germans.)

You accidentally invent a new variety of apple. (me. Actually, this is quite simple. Since no two apple seeds produce the same apple, encouraging the growth of random sprouts around the place automatically produces a new variety—even if it is rock-hard, olive drab, and tastes like a football.)

You build a tractor out of a screen door.

You feel more secure if your car has the option to start with a hand crank.

And finally . . . how many Lithuanians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: One to bring a 300 pound light bulb from 1,000 miles away, one to invent a jack to lift it, two to shore up the ceiling to take the weight, one to write a tragic story about it, one to bring the beer, one to remind the others what the task was in the first place—but he becomes distracted by an oil leak under a truck across the street, and at least six to get the old hay baler running. The total is . . . what was the question?

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