You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The anonymous St. Patrick’s Day.
It’s March 17th 2015.
The only reason I know this is because people are wearing green shirts.
The only reason I know it’s St Paddy’s day is because the calendar is staring me in the face.
“Hey look at that; it’s St Patrick’s Day,” I marvel.
“Where’s your green?” I say to one girl dressed like Johnny Cash, the man in black.
“Right here,” she says raising a green necklace around her delicate neck.
A sliver of green in an otherwise black ensemble.
“Very dark. Very foreboding” I spew.
“Not very St. Patrick’s Day, I know,” she says. “I’m not going out anyway,” she says.
I get it. I’m at work in a big cinder block building. There are no windows. It’s an ice box of a room. The ceilings are forty feet high with industrial fans and vents that never seem to spin.
It doesn’t look like St. Patrick’s Day up there.
I gaze up wondering how clean the ceiling is. Are there death spiders up their spinning webs of excrement laced death. Is this detritus falling down upon me in a microscopic rain that causes my eyes to tear and my nose to run.
Where are all the Leprauchans I wonder?
I look at the wall beside me. It is nuclear bunker thick, painted a relaxing beige. Is that to keep us from feeling claustrophobic? Is it designed to optically slow down the rats so the traps can catch them.
I look for the rainbow in the beige. I see not a pot of gold, only beige.
The carpet is dark brown. It is a cross between spilled coffee filter and muddy shoe prints.
No candy or gold coins here.
There are flat screens around the room that beam in ABC and CNN.
I see the white house is still white.
I see that ISIS still wants to behead people.
But I don’t see much on St. Patrick.
And that’s my point.
With no field of reference, it’s Tuesday.
I just texted my sister and said, hey you got a minute.
“I’m going to an Irish bar for corn beef and cabbage” she texts back.
That’s when it really strikes me.
Holy Crap! It’s St. Patrick’s Day.
It’s 9 pm at night and I have lost all conception of the green holiday blaring all round me.
I am partially embarrassed and partially sad that I did not realize this.
To the Nation, It’s St. Patrick’s Day.
But to me, it’s Tuesday.
I’m typing and editing. The clock is tick tocking its usual nonsense at me.
Deadline pressures don’t care whether it’s Tuesday or March 17th.
Leprauchans can lift their leg and pee on you, but if your story doesn’t make slot, the producer’s wrath will be felt.
Tonight I’m doing a story about replacing windshields. It’s a story that is interesting, but sort of who the hell cares, right?
While I’m watching a man use suction cups to adhere a brand new windshield on a truck, the rest of the world is partying, raising a glass of Guinness to the blue sky and signing a lymric.
While I’m concerned about how long this taped piece runs, the rest of the world is hugging each other because green is the color of Ireland.
While I’m working, bored, lost in a bomb shelter of journalistic indifference, the rest of the world is celebrating green beer and blinking green hats.
When did it come to this?
When did I end up inside a refrigerator box of disconnect.
How do you forget it’s St.Patrick’s Day.
Sure I am wearing green, but now that I look at it. Is it really green? I mean really?
It’s sort of green but really, it’s sort of not.
In fact if Blah was a color, I think I am wearing blah. If not blah, perhaps it is almost grey.
That’s sad. My green is a lost child somewhere between blah and grey.
My St. Patrick’s day is a cubicle inside a bomb shelter in the hood.
There are no rivers dyed green. There are no bars breaking maximum occupancy by a 1,000.
Where I am, connected to Google, St. Patrick is a Catholic Saint. To the rest of the world he is a symbol of alcoholism with food coloring.
When I was in college, St. Patrick’s night was a night to meet girls and get drunk and have fun.
but the night shift changes everything.
I am writing a script for a newscast that nobody wearing green will watch.
Anyone in the target demos is drunk, kissing someone in green right now.
Earlier in the day a bar owner sent me a picture. It’s 2:30 pm.
“You coming?” he says.
He all ready looks hammered. He has a big green hat on his head. He has two voluptuous young ladies by his side. They are wearing green, I think. I do know their St. Patrick’s clothing fits snugly.
I am close to going home.
I could pop over to Dan McGinnis and brave the crowd, showcase my green blah and toast the patron st. of alcoholism with a tall frosty.
But for some reason, I don’t feel it.
For some reason, I am more concerned about the sobriety check points than the shamrock shakes and lucky charms of this perfectly green day.
Have I gotten old?
Have I lost the desire to find my pot of gold? Has my Leprechaun left the station?
The world is screaming Erin Go Bragh, and I’m screaming who knows how to make this copier work?
It’s a strange realization that St. Patrick’s day has come and gone without me.
The crazy thing is, nobody, outside of me cares.
Nobody outside of me noticed that I missed it.
Christ, I barely remembered to remember that I missed it.
St. Patrick’s Day.
Someone fix the damn copier!
Life’s Crazy™