thoughts on st. paddys 2012

I wrote this at the end of a long day dealing with all things St. Paddys...

"I am enjoying yet another St. Patrick's Day working at a well-known Irish place in Chicago.  Well, enjoying is perhaps too strong a word for it. Enduring is probably a more accurate one.

I am not Irish and make no pretence of ever having been, either now or in my past genetic history.  However, as a transplant to this grand nation of small nations, I have come to recognize the importance, at least to some, of having some sort of cultural shorthand, a way of saying "this is where I'm from and this is the heritage I value most because I identify heavily with it".

St. Patrick's Day seems be an opportunity for anyone, and I mean absolutely anyone, to claim to be Irish for a day.  And not only that, to aspire to the lowest possible cultural stereotype, namely: drunken public behavior dressed in clothing of a color can best be described as 1980's green, genteely referred to by some as "kelly" and drinking fluids of the same color.

So today I have had to pick up reams of toilet paper spread about the ladies bathroom. Twice. I have had to go into one of our men's bathroom to stop three young men from playing football with a soap dispenser, and have fielded dozens of phone calls from a variety of sources which range from the sublime to the ridiculous and everything in between.

I have endured beer on my clothes, heat, sticky floors, a lack of any kind of break except to nip to the bathroom and one fairly disruptive computer emergency. I have printed and folded 250 menus, wrapped silverware and rustled up extra tables, seemingly from thin air. I have tried to soothe disappointed potential customers who are surprised when I tell them at 6.50pm that there will be no table for their party of 6 people at 7.30pm (while inwardly raising my eyebrows yet again at the lack of foresight that allows for utter surprise that there is no such magic table for them no mattter whom they claim best buddyship with).

As I try to field yet another call over the disasterous cacophony that are the pipers (does anyone understand that piper are traditionally Scots not Irish?) and as my head begins to thump I tell myself grimly: this will be the last one. THE VERY LAST ONE. Because I'm damned sure this ain't part of my heritage or, for that matter, anyone who truly believes in the wonderful cuisine, culture and heritage that is truly an Irish inheritance.

Slainte!"

stormin’ the teacup

One of my biggest gripes about living here in the US is that the news media seems to be hell bent on making everything as frightening as possible. In the last decade I’ve survived everything from a deadly flu pandemic to a full scale invasion by terrorists and plenty in between. The thing that annoys me most, and on a regular basis, is the weather reporting.

Now where I'm from, the weather reports are pretty understated. By which I mean the hurricane of 1987 was, and I quote “actually, the weather will become very windy”. The “very windy” weather was, in fact, hurricane force winds. In one single night, they went on to devastate much of south-east England’s woodlands, losing nearly 15 million trees, about 4% of England’s total.

Living here, I’ve become used to the ‘storm in a teacup’ factor. Listen to what’s being said, then scale it back by about 25% and stripping out all hyperbole and eventually reach some kind of information I can actually use. So you can imagine when weather anchors started talking about the Great Blizzard of 2011, I dialed it down in my head to maybe a foot of snow, blown around a bit and everything back to normal by breakfast time.

Hah. This time I should have paid attention.

On the day in question, Tuesday February 1^st, I had been invited to a surprise party. By late afternoon, it had begun to snow. So light and feathery, it was blowing in all directions and dancing around against a pale gray sky. By the time I had to be at the party it was blowing a gale and I had begun to feel a little like an Antarctic explorer trying to get to base camp as I walked towards the party. By the time I reached my destination my face felt it had been sand blasted with ice and the breath sucked from my body.

All, of course, forgotten at the ensuing party with the liberal application of alcohol, friends and dirt cake. Although the numbers were down and every time the birthday boy’s almost-brother-in-law went out for a smoke on the balcony he comes back looking 50 years older, his hair is white with snow, it still all seemed like a little bit of overkill on the weather reporting front.

That was, until it came time to go home. Amid alcohol-fueled goodbyes and offers of a comfy couch to sleep on, I stepped out of the condo sure that it would be nothing more than a few inches of snow and that I could jump in a taxi and head home. My first hurdle came in getting out the door of the condo building. It was stuck. After leaning on it with all my weight the snow drift keeping it shut gradually gave way, giving me just enough room to get out.

That should have been my first warning. By the time I reached the nearest junction, I felt like turning back; the wind was blowing hard in every direction, there were already 2 foot drifts and it was hard going and, not a taxi (or any other kind of vehicle for that matter) in sight. As I crossed Lincoln Avenue, I had a tiny flash of fear that something could happen to me out here and no one would know. They’d just find my iced up body with my purple-gloved fingers grimly clutching my laptop bag and a look of surprise on my face as the thaw set in.

But strangely, I began to enjoy my journey. It was so peaceful. There was no traffic and it was awe inspiring with drifts of snow in beautiful shapes and the wind sweeping it up and back down into new drifts. It took me almost 40 minutes to get home, a journey which normally takes about 25, and in parts the snow was up to my knees. The hardest part came in trying to get down the path to my apartment building as the snow was up to my butt.

Reaching home I was tired, soaked, and bits of my body were colder than they had ever been before but I was exhilarated, it had been the most amazing journey home I had ever had. I had been given a chance to experience a dramatic force of nature at it’s most humbling and had lived to tell the tale.

So to all those Chicago weather anchors I say “Storm in a teacup? So what? Bring it on!”