c is for … canucklehead

Day 18:365 Gratitude Challenge and April 4th A to Z Challenge

Today I am grateful that I am a Canucklehead. That’s right, a Canucklehead. According to www.boredatuni.com, a “Canucklehead is a total Canadian person. [It] sounds like it should be an insult, but it turns out, anything to do with Canada is pretty cool.” As a proud Canucklehead, I feel that it is my duty to clarify a few misconceptions that some people may have about us Canuckleheads.

• Canuckleheads only drink beer. This is absolutely positively 100% false. We also drink lagers, stouts, liquor and wine. Sometimes we even drink water, juice, milk, pop, coffee, tea, and a whole other assortment of beverages. On occasion, I have even put a slice of lemon in my water because I like to live dangerously. We are a frickin eclectic people, let me tell you.

• Polar bears roam freely across Canuckland. Again, false. I have never once seen a polar in my back yard nor can I say that any of my friends have. Polar bears roam freely way up, and I mean way up, in Northern Canuckland where it is frigging cold enough for polar bears to live comfortably.  While I have seen pictures of polar bears, the closest I have ever been to a polar bear was at a zoo and there was a nice enclosure between us. However, I do not think that he could have been a true Canuck polar bear because he wasn’t all that polite when I waved at him. Actually, the impolite bastard looked the other way. He remains dead to me to this day.

• All Canuckleheads are lumberjacks and wear red flannel shirts. I blame Monty Python for this misconception. Remember the lyrics to their Lumberjack song? “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night and I work all day.” (Good luck getting that song out of your head now – hey, I needed it to make a point. Okay?) This song was written in reference to a barber who always wanted to be a lumberjack in British Columbia (a province in a Canuckland). While lamenting about his unfulfilled life, he rips off his barber coat and reveals a red flannel shirt underneath. I mean, really. Canuckleheads have way more fashion sense than that. And while we may have oodles and oodles of trees in our fair country, not all 33 million of us can be lumberjacks. I mean, who would be left to play hockey?

• Canuckleheads wear toques all the time. Wrong. I respectfully ask you, have you seen any photographs of us? Do we all have toque heads? The answer is most definitely we do not. We have some pretty styling heads up here and we cannot be going around sticking toques on and ruining our perfectly coiffed heads. Also, wearing toques all the time assumes that we live in a constant state of winter.

• Winter is all year round. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Most of us actually experience the four seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter. Winter technically lasts from December to March. As a matter of fact, we Canuckleheads have been know to endure many the blistering hot summer and, if we were to wear toques and red flannel shirts all the time, we would be dead from heat-itis or some other hot disease.  Not to mention that we would all look like feckin’ eejits and feckin’ eejits we most certainly are not. Plus all the igloos that I have heard that we live in would melt.

• We are a polite and well-mannered people.  Hmmmmmmm. Did you read my post about ‘a is for assholes’? I could not have written that if I had never been on the receiving end of a few impolite and ill-mannered Canucklehead assholes in my lifetime. While the majority of Canuckleheads are lovely and polite people, many of us, myself included, can also swear like feckin’ truck drivers when need be. Please don’t be arguing about this with me because I may just have to tell you to shut the hell up. Sorry. So sorry if I offeneded you there. I didn’t mean to. Again, I was just making a point.

• Canuckleheads only eat backbacon, maple syrup and Kraft Dinner. Ewwwwwww; this is crazy and completely illogical. Maple syrup goes on waffles and pancakes only. While I have been known to dip my perfectly buttered toast in a bowl of maple syrup, it cannot be just any old maple syrup. It has to be real Canuckland maple syrup and not the Aunt Jemima kind. There are certainly maple syrup rules that we follow in Canuckland. Maple syrup does not go on backbacon or Kraft Dinner. We are not an uncivilized people. While we do like backbacon, we also enjoy bacon strips on our BLTs. As for Kraft Dinner, well, all can I say is that it is a birthday party staple along with hot dogs. Quit judging us. We’re sick of it quite frankly.

• We only have one highway in Canuckland and our major source of transportation is sled dogs. Those living in major cities sometimes ski and skate to work, too, because all of Canuckland is covered by tundra. False. While we do have the Trans Canuckland Highway stretching from one end of the country to the other, we do have other roads that allow us to get off the highway and visit friends and family from time to time. That is, for those of us who actually like our families otherwise you could just keep going until you really want to get off the highway. It’s really amazing how our country has progressed from sled dogs to planes, trains and automobiles. Some of our automobiles even come with heated seat warmers which is awesome when you consider how we live in a country that only has one season called feckin’ winter.

• Everyone knows everyone. Come on. Be realistic here. How can we be expected to know everyone in a country as vast and populated as ours? Is it because of that one highway thing and you think that we pass by everyones’ house?  Do you think that as we sled dog by each house we are yelling, “Oh, hi there, Michael John. How the heck are ya?” I know. I am getting really sarcastic now but I can’t help it. Once I was asked by this crazy Irishman if I knew his sister, Sheila, who lives in Toronto. When I politely explained to him that I did not, he inquired how far Toronto was from where I lived. After I explained to him that it would take approximately 4.5 to 5 hours to drive there, he replied, “Jaysus, we’d be in the feckin’ ocean by then!” So there, I am allowed to be sarcastic when faced with questions like that.

• Canuckleheads only watch hockey. Seeing how Canuckland totally dominates this sport, I can understand why there would be a misconception that it is the only sport we watch. As great as hockey is, we are interested in all kinds of sports. Did you know that a Canucklehead invented basketball (James Naismith)? Did you know that our national sport is lacrosse? At some point in time, Canuckleheads were introduced to curling, skiing, skating, broomball, baseball, football, soccer, golf, track and field, and a whole slew of other sports. I know. Crazy, right? Who in their right mind would ever introduce a bunch of beer drinking, toque and red flannel shirt wearing, sled dogging, and well-mannered speaking people, who only have one major highway to mush their dogs on, to other sports? I have to say, you’ve got me there.

• We only listen to Canadian music. Sigh. Most of us Canuckleheads are really, really, really tired of certain Canadian musicians. *cough* Justin Bieber *cough* Celine Dion *cough * Barenaked Ladies *cough* Rush *cough*  Now before you go sending off your emails of hate to me because you just LOVE Justin Bieber and Barenaked Ladies, hear me out (please pretty please with sugar on top). Canuckland has this little thing called the CRTC (Canuckland Radio-Television and Telecommunications Comission) which issues certain standards for Canuckland’s broadcasting and telecommunication systems. One such standard is that all Canuckland radio and televisions stations must play a certain percentage of Canuckland content each and every day. I get it. It is important for a country to promote its own talent before anyone else’s. However, what usually ends up happening is that the next hit single of say, Justin Bieber, is played over and over and over and over and over again throughout a single day. Baby, Baby, Baby, ooooh, you just cannot escape it. By the way, on behalf of all Canuckleheads, I apologize for Nickleback. Enough said.

• We say ‘eh’ all the time and pronounce ‘about’ as ‘aboot’. This really gets me hot enough under my Canucklehead collar to melt my igloo when I am made fun of for saying ‘eh’ and ‘aboot’. What country doesn’t have their own version of ‘eh’? For example, Americans say ‘huh’ and Ausralians say ‘aye’. Why should we be picked on for it and not anyone else? Is it because we are just so gaul darn nice and you know that we will just sit back and take it? Eh, is that it? Well, blow it out your piehole. And as for ‘about’, let me clarify it. From what I gather, how we hear things has to do with ears and dipthongs and linguistics and shit like that which is really fancy speak for “we hear the sound that most closely resembles something in our own experience with language and lets us reproduce a recognizable approximation” (https://wwwhttps://www.quora.com/Why-do-Americans-think-Canadians-pronounce-about-as-aboot).  So stop picking on us Canuckleheads and clean the wax out of yer ears so you can really hear what we are talking about.

I hope this proud Canucklehead has helped dispel any misconceptions you may have about my beloved Canuckland. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be off to feed the sled dogs so that they will have enough energy to chase off the polar bear lurking around in the back yard. After that, I must fix my lumberjack husband a fine meal of Kraft dinner and backbacon smothered by a healthy dose of maple syrup followed by a pint of beer to wash it all down. Hopefully, he has a clean toque and red flannel shirt to wear for tomorrow because the ones hanging on the clothesline are frozen stiff in the raging winter blizzard out there. And to top it all off, I hope that there is a hockey game on so that we won’t have to listen to Justin Bieber, eh?

Canucklehead: 1

Myths: 0