Legalise nuclear bombs! Legalise snakes in Ireland!
As I recover from my post-Paddy’s hangover and slowly regain the clear thoughts that once plagued my sober self. I am left with a sense of creeping logic that I was, with my ignorance of the open container ordinance in the city centre and my unfortunate addiction to climbing the statues on O’Connell Street, probably indistinguishable from rest of the raving scourge that ravages this city every year: a sickening green-coloured cocktail of American day-trippers, heavily alert Garda officers, and the Guinness-saturated individuals that brought the guards out of their holes in the first place.
The Americans, most will say, are the worst of the bunch. They come en masse, flooding the non-EU passport line at Dublin airport for the first time since Garth Brooks and his remarkably still alive fanbase rolled through. Our brave customs officers do their best, setting aside their usual sour scowls and incredibly unnecessary questions about the weapons-grade plutonium in my carry-on bag (I’m nuking Sandycove). They instead hand out visas like free HSE condoms to every Yank who rolls through with their blue passport, the ones with the majestic eagle and fresh wheat overlooking the worst photo you have ever seen of someone taken ten years before at the height of their teenage acne. And yet, they do this while getting mad at me when I roll through customs, dismissing the fact that I have been waiting for an IRP card for 5 months and just want to get to class on Monday with “we can’t allow weapons-grade plutonium into the country there, even if you are using it to blow up Sandycove. I’m afraid I’ll have to call the guards.”
When I’m not hindered by my terrorism plots, on Paddy’s Day I can usually be found on the statues on O’Connell Street, trying to get the best view possible of John C. Reilly or whatever other American actor who comes to Ireland to “reconnect with their roots.” But I love climbing the statues for more than just the view. When I tried to add the Jim Larkin statue on O’Connell to my extensive list of already-summited statues, I had the privilege of being acquainted with the quote on the side: “The great only appear great because we are on our knees, let us rise!” I had a good laugh thinking about how historians completely misinterpreted this quote about knob-slobbing and glizzy-guzzling as some sort of rousing gesture towards the oppressed people of Ireland. Once I got to the top of the statue, though, I nearly fell into a group of shrieking Texan moms after trying to get a proper grip on Jim Larkin by pulling trig on his wide-open mouth. To save myself I had to settle on grabbing one of his outstretched hands, the one that just so happened to have a fresh steaming pile of whatever was left over after some Dublin seagull’s daily intake of Costa toastie crusts and smaller seagulls (probably). It definitely also had a helping of whatever green-flavoured shit the mid eating establishments of Dublin decided to serve up that day, considering the faint impression of green I found in my hand when I drew it away from Larkin’s. I don’t know, maybe it was like that one time I went to camp and wouldn’t eat anything other than Lucky Charms and the Haribos from the care package my mom sent me. There’s not a whole lot of green in that diet, let me tell you, except when it’s coming out of the other end enough to make me shit my pants tree-coloured (because of all the brown, or all the green? I’ll let you decide, there was a literal shitload of both) in the middle of campfire song time. But I digress.
I only really got to spend around 15 seconds on that statue, anyway, the guards swooped in to stop me faster than you could say “I have weapons-grade plutonium in my carry-on, stay back” and ushered me down, finessing the pints that my friends down below had been nursing. One of them swears that he saw the guard chug it before chucking it at the parade’s yearly drag performance, but whether any reliable witnesses exist on Paddy’s day I cannot say, as I am hardly one myself. It makes you wonder how completely and utterly piss-drunk Patrick had to be to think he could drive all the snakes out of Ireland in one go: Proclaiming that he had the power of God (and alcohol) on his side as he went outside to brave the army of snakes that I assume had been plaguing the Island for a long time beforehand. And who knew? He was right. I can’t imagine how much money was lost on that bet. You would think that God rocked with this play, considering that snakes probably snuck on the Ark (along with the spiders, sharks, and podcast bros), and never were meant to survive anyway. But apparently even God was telling Patrick to Irish goodbye Ireland the whole time. He wanted him to go study in England, which is strange considering Ireland is the last bastion against Martin Luther’s heretical evil. It’s not even the only thing wrong with the original story: almost everything in the original is wrong actually. St. Patrick didn’t drive any snakes out of Ireland (we know this because the founder of Slytherin House, Salazar Slytherin, was Irish. Don’t ask how I know this, I only got to book 4, plus JK Rowling cancelled af (source: harrypotterwikifandom.com)). Further, St. Patrick wasn’t even a saint, according to the History channel (same fucking guys who said the pyramids were built by aliens, in case you were wondering). Instead it is thought that the title was given to him through popular acclaim, the equivalent to everyone calling your mate in secondary school “legend” for matching with the hot assistant principal on Tinder. And to top it all off, St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish, he was born in Roman Britain (shudder), he just got captured from his rich mommy and daddy’s estate by Irish raiders and imprisoned in Mayo (also shudder).
That’s all well and good, I guess. The whole thing gives work off only to those who aren’t already slaving away to make shitty dyed-green food or to keep the dumb stupid idiots (like myself) off the statues. But at least you get paid more working Paddy’s in most cases. And to those who already have a drinking problem, the holiday is finally an excuse to get drunk at 9 AM without seeming like an absolute degenerate. Plus, the holiday was made at the only time it could have been made. Would a rich British kid brought to Ireland to indoctrinate the locals into a new religion today ever get their own holiday? No, I didn't think so. Get a grip.