Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This morning at Kneader's...
Yeah, I figured it out a few seconds later, but I had honestly forgotten that it was St. Patrick's day.

I remember being in grade school when wearing green was irrevocably tied to your survival. Going to school without green on was like going to war without a gun. Mean kids roamed the playground with an unnatural, voracious look in their eyes - stalking, like a pack of wolves, the poor souls who had forgotten what day it was. I made damn sure that my green was always bright and obvious - a big green sweater or something, ya know? There was no way in hell I was going to be some bully's pinch toy. I'd always see some kid at recess whose green was hidden or hard to find. He likely thought he was being clever, but you'd see the smile disappear from his face when the mean kids caught his scent, zeroing in on him. He'd run at first, but then stumble, pulling up his pant leg to reveal the green on his socks in a last-ditch effort to appease the brutal attackers.

"Aggh! Stop it! I've... OWW... I've got green on! It's on my socks, see!? Oww!!!" His distant cries would fall on deaf ears.

The mean kids knew perfectly well the rules of pinching. If you pinched somebody with green on, they were entitled to pinch you back ten times. But no kid in his right mind would evoke such fury. It wasn't worth the consequences, fair or not.

It was playground tyranny for a day. Had it lasted a week, or a month, a revolution might have been in order. We out-numbered the mean kids three to one. We had the leadership, AND the smarts. But as things were, we chose to wear green and endure the chaos for a day. Then we'd go back to our happy little lives, to forget about the horrors of St. Patrick's Day till the following year.

-Barry

7 comments:

  1. Oh man...elementary school was brutal!!!

    I totally forgot it was St. Patrick's Day, too, until I tuned into "The Today Show" this morning while I was getting ready for work. I was confused by the fact that they were broadcasting from Ireland instead of New York and then I was like, "Oh...yeah!"

    It's kind of a pointless holiday if you're not Irish and you don't drink. heh

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  2. barry, this was so hilarious that i shared it on my blog! don't worry, i linked back to you, but it was just too good to not share! you're such a great writer! oh, and i love the sketch!

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  3. I like that drawing. :) And I totally thought St. Patrick's Day was Thursday for some reason, but the radio informed me otherwise. I was actually deciding whether to wear a brown or green shirt today, and I chose brown. Luckily no one pinched me. I don't know if I'm just too old for pinching or if the pregnancy belly made them decide I've got enough going on already to not need an extra pinch. :)

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  4. Either I'm black or naked in this picture... why's that?

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