St. Paddy's Day - Oh How the mighty have fallen

As I sit here with the latest round of flu like symptoms (contracted from my two year old daughter, AGAIN) I have had a moment to look back and reflect on 20+ years of St. Paddy’s Day’s Festivities. Having not actually been born Irish has never stopped me from participating in the holiday with the fervor of a loyal son of Erin. A little History first….
Both of my college roommates were Irish. One was actually born there and the other was not. Both were proud Irishman and between the three of us we were probably the three poorest students on that particular upstate NY college campus. However, we never let a lack of money get in the way of the one day (and I mean 24 hours) where we were all proud to be Irish. We would start planning how we would pay for this day long binge well in advance. Needless to say, we NEVER ran out of libations on St. Paddy’s Day. That just would have been bad form.

At midnight, as the 16th turned into the 17th we would tap the ceremonial Green Keg of Pabst (I didn’t say we had a lot of money). There was usually some pomp and circumstance (along with really bad Irish accents) as we toasted ourselves, our friends present and absent as well as friends of friends, cousins, TV repairmen, The Pope, Walt Disney, Columbo, Moe Larry, Curly and Shemp. Thus would begin a continuous flow of beer that would last until Midnight (actually 1 am when the bars up there closed) of the 18th. At which point the hurling/blowing chunks/puking would commence. All for the cause!

I pretty much carried this tradition with me into my after college life (minus the throwing up, as much as I could avoid it). As I got older, the starting time would get a little later and the ending time would get a little earlier. Last year, We started around 3pm and called it a night around 11:30pm. Still a hefty chunk of time, but the drinking was much slower and the conversation much more adult.

So here I sit now, having not consumed a single beer, in fact I didn’t even leave the house today due to my infectious state. There is part of me that misses the olds days, It’s not the drinking though. It’s the camaraderie that we shared. Point of fact, those days ended a long time ago. But, to all my friends, comrades, buddies and pals….
Erin Go Bragh…. SLAINTE!