MR:
OK, so it's La na Phadraig and I’m at Home Depot buying wood for slats for the bed
in the guest bedroom upstairs, and as I'm walking through this crowded hellhole, I see a handful of people are decked out in crazy Irish wear, but at
least it’s not as bad as I used to see it in high school or even a decade
ago. All this, “If you don’t wear green
you’ll get pinched.”
I remember a time
when it used to be, “If you don’t wear green you get kissed.” At the time they said that I was in grade
school and I always wear green because who wants to be kissed by a girl,
right? But then a few years go by and you’re
in high school and yeah, it’d be frikkin’ awesome if you get kissed by some
random girl, so once I didn’t wear green on St Patrick’s Day and nobody did a
damn thing. Not a kiss, not a pinch,
nothing.
So these people here at Home Depot: like the man from India with the
big belly and the Irish Flag t-shirt, and the six foot tall girl with the Irish flag sticking
out of her hair, wearing shamrock socks all the way up to her knees, or this old white guys with shamrock stickers slapped to each of his cheeks, these are the true
holdouts. At first, I want to pinch them, pinch
them awake. “Stop doing that!” I want to say, “No one in Ireland would wear
such shite!”
But then, as I go to the aisle with the wood and start pulling out the 10' long slats and look around for the place to cut them, I starting thinking, heck, let the people who are wearing the goofy clothes wear the goofy clothes. So few
people adhere to any traditions any more.
Everything is watered down and debilitated. The ones who continue wearing crazy shit for
traditions that never really existed in the first place, those people, for all
their ridiculous dress, are the bravest of us all.
Almost makes me want to go toast them with a green beer. But that's insulting to Ireland. Only Americans drink green beer on St Patrick's Day.
