Sgian-dubh

From Wikipedia: The sgian-dubh (/ˌskiːən ˈduː/ skee-ən-DOO; Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: )is a small, single-edged knife (Gaelic sgian) worn as part of traditional Scottish Highland dress along with the kilt. Originally used for eating and preparing fruit, meat, and cutting bread and cheese, as well as serving for other more general day-to-day uses such as cutting material and protection, it is now worn as part of traditional Scottish dress tucked into the top of the kilt hose with only the upper portion of the hilt visible. The sgian-dubh is normally worn on the same side as the dominant hand.

A silly mistake ? A mindless social gaffe more like it !

Moving is supposed to be one of the most stressful things to do, moving abroad with a family is doubly so and you can get into strange situations and be upset by the slightest things easily at first.
When we moved to Scotland the sons were in their early teens and the most important thing was of course getting them settled at their new school. School uniforms are not used in The Netherlands, so having to get them each a whole new wardrobe of school related clothes was quite something new. The strangest thing for them was having to have a whole set of a kilt and its accessories for special schooldays like Speech Day.

Their very first day at school was a day that DJ and I also needed to go to a formal function that night, the farewell party for DJ's predecessor.
That was a day full of worries, hoping they would like their new school and fellow pupils, wouldn't have too much trouble communicating in English all the time etc, you know, all those things mothers worry about. When I picked them up after school and asked them how it was, out came the story that they had had Assembly in the school chapel and that the chaplain had told them that it was expected of them to come to chapel with their kilts on but without underwear! Sounded most embarrassing for young teens but also very peculiar.
Now of course one time or another I had heard about Scotsmen, kilts and hinted suggestions of being bare underneath them, but I had always thought this was just a joke and never thought any further about it. I felt quite upset for the sons but also was wondering whether this might have been a language problem, whether they just misunderstood. Whom to ask, it definitely meant we needed to know for sure?

Only an hour later we were picked up by a limousine to go to the function, the limo had already picked up another couple who also lived near Perth. We had never met before, DJ sat in front next to the driver and I sat in the back next to this couple, next to the man all dressed up in a kilt.
Which made me blurt out to this stranger I had only met a couple of seconds earlier, without any explanation first, if it was really true that
Scotsmen wore nothing under their kilt !? I'm blushing at the very thought of it now, but imagine the shock of being asked this as the very first thing by your new boss's wife. He stammered something about his wife would never let him :-) I'm sure he must have thought I was not only very rude but very direct and personal too, but I can honestly say that
I just was so full of wanting to reassure the sons that they had misunderstood that I didn't think at all that this would feel like a very personal question I was asking this man sat right next to me dressed in his kilt. I'm kind of hoping the fact that he quit his job months later didn't have anything to do with my very silly question.
By the way, we never found out what had actually been said in chapel, but I did tell the sons that as far as I was concerned they could keep their underwear on !

For MonoMonday and its host dollykgray who set today's theme to 'silly mistakes', with thanks to her :-)

Thanks very much for your comments and stars for yesterday's Blip :-)