Stuff your Dad likes: St. Patrick's Day
In this week’s Stuff Your Dad Likes: your dad likes green beer.
Jacob Zinn can’t give you fatherly advice, but he can borrow your car and return it with an empty tank.
By Jacob Zinn
[contributor]
This Saturday is everyone’s excuse — Irish or not — to go out and get flat-out, straight-up, full-on, black-out drunk.
The annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations often lead to heavy drinking and heavier upchucking of that nasty, green-dyed beer that most bars peddle every 17th of March. And even though your dad probably no longer pounds back brews until he’s incoherent, he remembers the days when he did.
Your old man might’ve spent hours searching for a four-leaf clover as a child, or had an irrational fear of leprechauns. It’s even likely he wore one of those green shirts that read “Kiss me, I’m shitfaced” and “Irish I had a Beer.”
Of course, only a minute percentage of those who wear those shirts are even part Irish, let alone full-blooded lads and lasses. In 2000, nearly 35 million Americans reported Irish ancestry — about six times the population of Ireland.
But pretending to be Irish is cool. It was cool when your dad was your age and it’s still cool now. Whether that means cheering for the Red Sox, listening to the Dropkick Murphy’s or eating an entire box of Lucky Charms, the Irish have shamrocked the world. (Or, in your case, it’s keeping down a pint of Guinness ‘cause your lightweight liver can hardly handle any beer darker than a pale ale.)
In promotion of a healthy vital organs, your dad can’t recommend getting wasted, but he also sees it as a passing of the torch. If he drank ‘til his face was as green as his beer, then he knows it’s likely you’ll do the same — no matter how many times he tells you the vomit-stained consequences.
So as a disclaimer, please drink responsibly this St. Patrick’s Day. But if you’re going to drink irresponsibly, your sober dad will be more than happy to drive your drunk ass from the Blarney Stone/Doolin’s/Ceili’s to home.
