Happy Drunk Day!

I realized when instant messaging became a staple to interact with your friends that sarcasm doesn’t come across in text. A harmlessly witty comment intended for humor, not offense, is taken completely wrong. Eventually I realized that it’s not just a misunderstanding of textual content, it’s a lack of humor on the readers’ end as well. I make this point so that readers can read it and understand what I’m about to post has half truth to it, but the completely bizarre and outrageous is being written for amusements. It’s purposely ridiculous and toes the line offense because I intended it to be humorous. My other posts should have carried a similar warning, but I assumed that it was obvious where my jokes and beliefs differed. I did place the warning here because I am about to write something that may offend an entire culture, my culture. With that said, don’t read on if you offend easily or if you think I easily offend.

I’m Irish. With a name like Brianne Kelly Malloy, it’s hard to pretend I’m anything but a little pale, freckled Irish girl. Now, with marriage giving me a new last name and fantastic make-up to cover my freckles, I can hide in a corner on St. Patrick’s Day and pretend “those aren’t my people”. I can make a turkey TV dinner, while the rest of my family eats their boiled dinner. Boiled dinner makes me ashamed of being Irish. Most other cultures seem to have such delicious tasting food. No, not my people, we get boiled dinner or corned beef and cabbage. I’ll pretend I really am Asian that day, and pass.

Then, there is the real problem with St. Patrick’s Day. We may as well rename it “Drunk Day”, because that seems to be the only reason all people, Irish or not, celebrates a day for my culture. I fear my kids are going to learn that to be Irish; you have to be drunk and eat smelly and disgusting tasting food. I’ll sure pass along Irish pride to them. This brings up a good point in my head though; maybe the food tastes so bad because my people are too drunk to realize just how awful the food is. Us proud Irish should stand up and be proud of our rich and fascinating culture!

We should celebrate that our families survived the Potato famine that the government unleashed against the poor, knowing they were too silly to grow another vegetable to live off of. Or was it that turnip shouldn’t exist as food so they’d rather starve than grow it? Either way, we overcame the adversity of not having potatoes and having the English hate the Irish Catholics. Our rich culture of drunk and disorderly conduct, and rugby and Braveheart, oh… the Scottish get that one.

Ok, I give up. I suppose there’s a reason we’re only known for terrible food and being drunk. The first step is admitting the problem, and the second step is acceptance. I accept that I’m stereotyped a certain way because of my heritage and I find it funny. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you can’t laugh at anything.