As we all know, drinking yourself stupid is no way to honor St. Patrick. Also, it’s offensive to actual Irish people when Americans perpetuate the stereotype of heavy drinking as characteristic of this noble people who happen to be heavy drinkers.
And green beer is for losers. Do not drink green beer. Beer is not green, begorrah. Beer is not green.
Isn’t it time that we, as a sensitive and responsive people, find some way to recalibrate our alcohol consumption so that nobody’s widdle feelings get hurt? Begorrah?
Here’s what I propose: don’t drink because it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Drink despite St. Patrick’s day. What, you don’t have any other reason to get a medium-sized load on, assuming you can find a glass that your lousy kids haven’t filled with sand and glue and left in the driveway?
1. Drink because it’s almost spring. Hooray, spring! Have a drink. What other reasons? Let’s see . . .
2. Even though you’re not Irish, your teeth are like that because of heredity, and you’re doomed to carry flossers around in your purse, to become intimately familiar with that faded oil painting of irises on the oral surgeon’s wall, and to occasionally experience the disquieting sensation of tiny shards of bone working their way through the wall of your gum. Yes, that would be pieces of your skull coming out of your mouth. That seems fine. Have a drink. It’s a kind of oral care.
3. You keep finding what looks like a really perfect college for your kids, and then it keeps turning out they’re yet another one of those “please let us know if your roommate isn’t following the underwear folding guidelines. You know, for her soul” colleges. Bottoms up.
4. 43 years old; still don’t know how to use eyeliner. Glug glug.
5. They’re going to clone a T-rex, I guess. Honest to goodness, I feel like death by imprudently reconstituted savage dinosaur is the best kind of future we can hope for right now. Cheers!
6. I guess we’re still talking about thigh gap, still? (I unlinked the link because of bad effing language, but really, all you need to know is that they’re still talking about thigh gap, still.)
Maybe he’s making a statement? Or maybe he’s just a libertarian. O dinosaurs, do not delay.
8. Begorrah, I got up at 4 a.m. because my head was killing me, and then right before it was time to get up, I threw up for no reason. No, I’m not pregnant. I just thought about what kind of day it was going to be, and throwing up felt right. And now I need to start boiling the traditional repulsive slab of red fat strings, in honor of St. Patrick. First person to play Clancy Brothers at me is going to get a wedge of hot cabbage served up in the worst way.
9. You know what, the Clancy Brothers deserve their own number. Those sweaters. Gevalt.
10. I don’t mean to be a hideous racist or whatever, but having married into a supremely Irish family, it occurs to me that doing something just to spite someone else, whether it’s drinking or not drinking or taking a breath, is probably the most Irish thing you can possibly do. Unless maybe it’s doing something you do enjoy doing, but pretending you don’t enjoy it and that you’re doing it just to spite someone else, because that’s not crazy at all, you crazy Irish person.
So I’ll leave you to sort that one out. I’ll be over by the bar, by which I mean the driveway, digging glue out of my glass. These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Shantih, shantih, shantih and have I mentioned, begorrah.
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A version of this post originally ran at Aleteia, if you can believe it, in 2016.
Image: William Murphy via Flickr (Creative Commons)
For a red fat strings alternative (I like it fine, but the kids hate it) we make beef and Guinness pie for St Paddy’s. The kids love it, the hubby and I like it better than corned beef, and it lets my pregnant self consume Guinness with the alcohol cooked out. Everyone wins! https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/216928/beef-mushroom-and-guinness-pie/
BTW, what’s with this? “You keep finding what looks like a really perfect college for your kids, and then it keeps turning out they’re yet another one of those “please let us know if your roommate isn’t following the underwear folding guidelines. You know, for her soul” colleges.”
I really want to know where these places are. My kids have gone to three different small Catholic colleges (Newman Guide ones) and have never run across this. Some have had cursory room inspections which seems reasonable when you are living with a lot of other people. (My son had a roommate who brought in a glass of milk, spilled it, and forgot about it under piles of clothing. When the stench reached out into the hall, the R.A. was called in.) These kids don’t have Oxford scouts to clean up after them (see “Brideshead Revisted”) and the common good sometimes requires parental type responses. I’ve never heard of a student being ratted on because of mis-folded underwear and my kids have dealt with some difficult roommates. I think these are Catholic urban legends, like the ruler wielding Sister O’Malley stories. Every time someone tells me a nun story, it’s usually a person who makes me think “Yeah, you obviously weren’t smacked enough.”
American Irish are certifiable according to my brother-in-law, a genuine Irishman from Ireland (and he knows crazy – his father was a gun runner for the IRA). In Ireland St. Patrick’s Day is treated as a religious feast day. And the natives wear blue in honor or Our Lady. Our parish hosted a special mass offered by our bishop for the various Hibernian clubs prior to a parade. I swear, the congregation’s behavior was anything but Catholic. It seemed to be the Christmas, Easter, and St. Patrick’s Day crowd. Ugly plastic green hats and green beads abounded. There was a clown/leprechaun in attendance and a bagpipe played badly. In past years, beer cans have been found in the choir loft.
Did I mention that I hate Guinness?
Happy Birthday Simcha!
Begorrah!
Rotten little LifeTeen prigs. Their parents must be monsters.
My Husband strolled around Trader Joe’s today and bragged about being Irish to anyone who would listen. I could hear his distinct Latin accent and laugh from across the room.
When the Mexican cashier scanned our corned Beef brisket, Senor 4 % whispered (“gonna make that sh*t into Tacos.”) They consulted each other on salsa, and agreed that it covers a multitude of sins. I lamented the fact that Ireland missed out by having sucky borders.
I met someone from Mexico at a conference once; when he introduced himself to the group, I spent a bit mentally trying to figure out how to spell his last name which, obviously, had to be Spanish. But no, later when I saw his name tag and talked to him a bit more, it turned out that his grandfather had moved to Mexico from Ireland and so his last name was quite Irish.
I celebrated St Patrick’s Day by wearing my Life Runners running shirt (it says very brightly on the back “Remember the Unborn”) at the track, despite the side-eyes I get sometimes from other runners, and today, for the first time, I got “Hey, I really like your shirt!” from a nice young lady with lovely tattoos on her neck. Begorrah!
Also, as somebody with Irish in her background and on the married side, yes, doing something in spite of others is very Irish. Sometimes I swear my kids are 100% Irish, instead of the probably 1/8 they really are.