the nose knows.

I was baptized and confirmed Lutheran, made the switch to the more modern Presbyterian, and have only recently gone back to church, at an institution so modern that I don't think it has an official affiliation other than just "Christian."  Anyway, all of this to provide you with a little background for this story.

I have a large nose.  My mother has a large nose.  My father has a large nose.  My sister has a large nose.  I'll save you any more insight into our family tree by summarizing that pretty much everyone genetically-related to me has a large nose.  Despite our last name, which literally translates from German to English as "mouth" (you really wanted me to say "nose," didn't you?), I am often mistaken as being Jewish.  And by "often," I mean that a vast majority of those who meet me for the first time assumes I'm Jewish.  My good Jewish friends regularly refer to me as "Mundtstein."

Sinead "Nose"

This picture was taken in Vail, the day after I was adamantly told how much I resemble Sinead O'Connor.  Thanks to Google Images, I've had the opportunity to over-analyze that... and I don't agree.  I'm not sure if Sinead O'Connor is Jewish (with a last name like O'Connor, I'd doubt it, but you never know), but I would bet that people assume she is... it's that nose!

Anyway, a particularly favorite "Jewish nose" story of mine, one which I use often at cocktail parties, occurred during my senior year of college:

I had just gotten home from a year abroad in Madrid, and naturally, I was broke.  Broker than broke.  As in, didn't even have enough money to play the lottery, broke.  A friend suggested I move in with a bunch of his friends in their run-down college house to the tune of $300/month.  Sold.  So after a couple weeks of living with a bunch of guys I had never met before (Note: In retrospect, I got really lucky that these guys were absolutely AWESOME, and perhaps I should have been a little more cautious before unpacking my boxes in some random house of men, but I digress), it was one of the guys' birthday.  The birthday boy had invited a bunch of people to a favorite campus bar to celebrate.  On our walk there (following a couple warm-up beverages), he started telling me about this girl from his communications class, "Katie," who said she would be attending the festivities.  By the time we got to the bar, I knew everything he knew about this girl, which was enough to know he liked her.  A lot.  She was already there by the time we got to the bar (a very good sign for my new roommate), and he pointed her out to me.

"See, there she is.  Over there, talking to that guy at the end of the bar," he told me, suddenly shy.  I told him to go over and talk to her.  After all, it was his birthday, and she was obviously there to see him.  He responded that he would rather wait until she was done talking to the other guy.

"C'mon, I'll be your wingman," I told him, grabbing his elbow and marching him over to Katie and the guy.  Within three minutes, I had the guy on the opposite end of the bar.  After he bought me a drink, I told him how I had just gotten home from being abroad and was studying to take the LSAT.  I told him how I was planning to go to law school immediately after undergrad and how I wanted to practice international corporate law.

"Oh, great.  Well where in DC did you do your internship?"  He asked.

"Um, I didn't do an internship in DC," I started to reply, but before I could repeat that I had just gotten home from being abroad, he interrupted with, "Oh, ok.  Well where in New York then did you do an internship?"

Clearly confused, I responded, "No, I didn't do an internship in New York either..."  He was shocked.

"Oh come on.  A nice Jewish girl like you, with a nose like THAT, and you can't get an internship on the east coast?!?"

...And that was the beginning of years of religious/ethnic mis-identification.

Shalom.