Previous entry:
Waiting a Lot

Next Entry:
An Evening of Library Science

Home:
One Truth For All

Archives

• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006
• August 2006
• July 2006
• June 2006
• May 2006
• April 2006
• March 2006
• February 2006
• January 2006
• December 2005
• November 2005
• October 2005
• September 2005
• August 2005
• July 2005
• June 2005
• May 2005
• April 2005
• March 2005
• February 2005
• January 2005
• December 2004
• November 2004
• October 2004
• September 2004
• August 2004
• July 2004
• June 2004
• May 2004
• April 2004
• March 2004
• February 2004
• January 2004
• December 1969

March 17, 2005

If You Pinch Me, I Will Smack You

I'm not wearing either green or orange today. This is not because I'm a spoilsport, or because I have no sense of fun. It's because I'm NOT IRISH.

I know this is going to come as a shock to many of you, especially my parents, but in general the Irish tend to come from Ireland, and as far as I know nobody in my family has ever been born in that land, much less been of an ethnicity that could be traced to that soggy, inebriated isle. (We come from a dry inebriated isle.)

I really only went out once today, to do laundry, and you'd think that at the laundromat people would not hassle you about what you are wearing, seeing as most of them are wearing the very last clean item of clothing in their wardrobe, but no. A woman was walking around saying, "You aren't wearing green? Do you want to be pinched?" She came near me, but I glared at her with the Evil Eye. She stopped short, then walked off to harass somebody else.

I really do hate this holiday more than others. Not that I don't like my Irish friends, but frankly, I'm not interested in being Irish any day of the year, especially if it involves green food colouring in otherwise inedible foodstuffs. I dig that the Irish were inexplicably unhappy about having snakes in their gardens, but an entire day of walking around drunk and pinching people is hardly an appropriate celebration for the results of having an exterminator visit, even if he was a saint.

I wonder what people would say if on some random day I went around wearing red and saying, "On this day, everybody is Turkish" in an obviously fake Turkish accent. I mean, at least my father was actually born there, which you can't say about most people who whip out that Irish great-grandmother as if she were some eat-green-food-free card. I could say that nobody could drink, and we all had to go beat up those guys who work at the Greek restaurant down the street (who happen to be Guatemalan, but close enough). You'd think I'd gone insane.

Posted by ayse on 03/17/05 at 6:09 PM