Misty Green Vomit-Colored Memories

Unlike the farcical St. Urho’s Day that occurred yesterday, today’s international celebration of drinking is more widely-known and respected, and is at least based on a “real” legend.
So it’s St. Patrick’s Day. I’m sure that throughout the world drunken people will be consuming massive quantities of corned beef and cabbage and washing it down with green beer.
Personally, not being Irish, or even “Irish for a day,” I don’t have much reason to celebrate, or even acknowledge, the day’s arrival.
I honestly don’t remember the last time I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, which, given the nature of the day and my own nature when I would have celebrated the day, could very well be an indication that I had a really good time.
For me, the last St. Patrick’s Day of note occurred in 2001, which would have been after I’d stopped celebrating (and it should be clear that by “celebrating” I mean “getting drunk off my ass”).
The only reason that one stands out for me is the fact that I actually went on a date that day. It had only been a couple of months since I’d arrived in Tucson, and it was the first time that I’d ever been set up on a blind date.
It actually went fairly well, though obviously it never led to anything significant.
I'm assuming that I would have celebrated in 2000, with that being the last time, but as I said, I have no recollection of doing so.
I do recall going out to celebrate in 1999, though having just been fired two days before I had precious little to celebrate.
Of course, as far as I was concerned, that was all the more reason to go out and celebrate.
Most of the details are kind of hazy, thanks to the passing of time and to the amount of beer I drank that day, but I do recall that I started pretty early.
After all, it’s not as if I had to be at work or anything.
So I spent most of the day in my regular bar with most of my friends.
For much of it I was wearing a stupid green plastic hat, as Misty, the beautiful bartender, had forced me to put it on.
How did she force me? She told me to do it.
Hey, as far as I’m concerned a beautiful girl telling me to do something qualifies as coercion.
She gave me the hat and told me to put it on, and when I demurred she said, much more forcefully than you’d expect one so sweet and gentle to be able to, “Do it!”
So you can see that I had no choice.
Speaking of Misty, along with green plastic hats the bar was giving out temporary tattoos as party favors, and when Misty had taken one, a shamrock, and began applying it to the upper part of her left breast most of the guys were tripping over each other to offer their assistance in holding it in place.
Beyond that, my only other real recollection of that St. Patrick’s Day is that someone accused me of “not being Irish” because I wasn’t drinking green beer. The fact that he was drinking Bud Light with green food coloring dumped in it while I was drinking Guinness just didn’t seem to register with him.
Of course, in those days I didn’t need a special occasion to drink Guinness.
*Sigh*
On the topic of Guinness, I did note last week when I was in Costco that it’s possible to actually purchase Guinness in bulk.
There was definitely a time when I would have taken advantage of that.
As I’ve been grocery shopping this week I’ve been forced to walk past a huge St. Patrick’s Day display of Guinness and Killian’s Irish Red, which were my two favorite things in the whole world once upon a time.
I have to admit that it made me a little sad to have to walk past the display without loading up my cart, and I couldn’t help but wonder just how good they would taste after having gone four and a half years without having so much as a drop.
Ah well, I’ll never get to know.
That’s clearly a good thing, but it still makes me a little sad.
In any case, the next time I go shopping the display will be gone, and for many people St. Patrick’s Day will just be another hazy memory of bad food and green vomit, and for me it’ll be a memory of just another Thursday.
I have to head in for a meeting/training session at work shortly. I may or may not be back with more later.