Let me start off by saying, I am not Irish. My parents are not Irish. My grandparents are not Irish. In fact, based upon the family history that has been done, I don’t think I have an Irish ancestor over the past 7 generations. So, when it comes to St. Patrick’s Day I am completely out of my league. Was it not for Google, I probably would not even know who St. Patrick was or why he was so special that he got his own day or why he was so cool that they made him a saint? For all I know, he is just a guy whose first name was Saint.
I grew up in Idaho. That’s Idaho, the state with the potatoes not Iowa, they are the children of the corn. The town was relatively small (although we thought it was a big city when the population reached 40,000 making it the third largest city in Idaho). As a kid none of my friends were Irish or at least none of them admitted it.
But every March we were all Irish or so we proclaimed. To be honest, we had to. We would wear green and speak with the worst accent you had ever heard. It was a cross between the cartoon leprechaun that valiantly fought to protect his Lucky Charms, and Maureen O’hara from the movie The Quiet Man. The key was wearing green. If you didn’t, by the time you got home from school you were black and blue from everyone pinching you. It was brutal.
As I got older my knowledge of Irish legend, heritage, and the patron saint of Ireland really didn’t get any better. Instead of pinching (although that still seemed to happen), St. Patrick’s Day meant wild parties, green beer, and more really bad accents.
I’ve added my own oddity to the mix. Each year I would make breakfast for the kids on March 17th. It would consiste of scrambled eggs with green food coloring, ham, and hash browns. The hash brown potatoes were because I was from Idaho and potatoes were a primary crop in Ireland (see some of that world history class actually stuck with me). The green eggs were because of the green. The ham was because Dr. Seuss taught us you always have ham with green eggs. In a lot of cases I would forget to buy ham so would substitute bacon. I know, that kind of defeats the whole Dr. Seuss thing but it did give me an appreciation of his genius. Green eggs and bacon just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Besides, who would believe Sam I Am would not eat bacon?
So, on this day let us remember St. Patrick by wearing green, eating gren eggs, drinking green beer, and trying to capture boxes of cereal with colorful marshmallows shaped like signs of the occult. It’s the least we can do.
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