I’m not Catholic, and as far as I know I’m not Irish, and I’m not from Boston (although I have been there, although not in the fall), but I still think Saint Patrick’s Day is fun.  Besides I think Jeremy has some Irish ancestry on his mother’s side so that counts, right?

The thing I like best about Saint Patrick’s Day is wearing green.  When I was a kid if you didn’t wear green that meant somebody was going to pinch you.  If the teacher wasn’t looking you got pinched more than once.  I didn’t like that part, but if you wore green you didn’t have to worry about it.  And I really like the color green.  Sometimes if you forgot, you’d be thinking of what you could possibly have that was green–your socks maybe, or how about if you were wearing a flower print–the green leaves and stems of the flowers?  And did shades like olive green count?  And if worst came to worst and you really did forget, you could always try to convince the other kids you were wearing green underwear–who would know?  It wasn’t like they could check or force you to prove it.  (Not in my school anyway.)

Something I liked even better was that the cafeteria would dye various food items with green food coloring.  When I went to college at Illinois College, the dining hall would do this.  We’d have green cake or green cupcakes or green cookies or something.  Once they gave us real, honest-to-goodness green eggs and ham.  I kid you not.  It was great.  Did I mention that Green Eggs and Ham is my favorite Dr. Seuss book?  In fact, if you hear me trying to convince you I really, honest, truly don’t like something, you’ll hear me quoting from it, changing the words to suit the situation.  (”I do not like it, Sam I am / I do not like green eggs and ham.”)

So while I know a lot of people think the proper way to celebrate Saint Patrick’s day is by consuming beer or whatever the alcoholic drink of choice is, I guess you can see the kid in me when I say that I think the perfect way to celebrate Saint Patrick’s day is to wear some green clothes and eat some green eggs and ham.  And then maybe curl up with a copy of the book and a nice green cupcake with green icing.  Oh, and then you can read a book about leprauchans afterwards while you’re at it if you want.

Now, where’s that green food coloring….