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St. Patrick's Day as a Patrick

March 17, also known as St. Patrick’s Day, is my Fourth of July.

For the entire week leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, I wear my lucky shamrock underwear. I’ve never washed them because I can’t lose the lucky charm. It’s worth the week-long rash I have following St. Patrick’s Day. 

I wake up at 3 a.m. and eat an entire raw potato. I do this purely to show the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s doesn’t scare me. As soon as I finish the potato, I high-five a ginger and spit on a Brit to assert dominance.

Before leaving the house, I bow seven times to my Irish flag, chug a Guiness and skip all the way Uptown looking for rainbows and leprechauns. 

After I finish my bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey, a small redhead child appears, leading me to mistake him as a leprechaun. I snatch him up while his mom’s back is turned and skip away from the Oxford Police with my leprechaun who won’t stop crying. 

I try to console him with a raw potato, but he throws it at me, despite everyone knowing potatoes are a leprechaun’s favorite food, as he yells that he is not a leprechaun. Little does he know, however, this isn’t my first leprechaun hunt. I know how mischievous they can be, so when he yells for his “mommy” I don’t fall for it. 

I explain to the crying leprechaun that as soon as he leads me to his gold I will let him free. I am, of course, referring to a VIP Brick pass.

He tells me that he “doesn’t even know who Will Weisman is.” 

After he refuses to lead me to the gold, we go back to my house where I can keep an eye on him until he changes his mind. When I was out buying some Lucky Charms to feed my new leprechaun, my dumb non-Irish roommate got bamboozled by the trickster and the little guy contacted the police. 

The Oxford Police Department then raids my houses, giving me flashbacks to the Irish Civil War that I know nothing about. I’m arrested on accounts of kidnapping and child endangerment. 

But, because I am wearing my unwashed, lucky underwear, the cop that arrests me is Officer O’Burke. He sympathizes with my desire for gold and agrees to let me go if I split the gold with him.

You and I both know I’m not splitting anything, but he doesn’t need to know that.

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At this point in the day, the sun starts to set, and my hopes for finding a rainbow are diminishing. I decide that I’ll just try leprechaun hunting again next year. I put on another shirt with a shamrock on it in order to head to the bars.

The shamrock originally served as a religious symbol that St. Patrick used to spread Christianity. Like any good Irishman, I am proud to spill green beer all over it at Brick Street. 

After an exhausting day of potato farming, beer drinking, Brit spitting and leprechaun hunting, I am exhausted. I call my parents, say goodnight to all 17 of my siblings, and go to sleep dreaming of rainbows, gingers and gold. Only 364 more days until I get to do this all over again. 

sulli293@miamioh.edu