Paddy’s Day no call, no show
The nerve, not showing up, not calling into Paddy’s Day lunch today. We went. We punched our ticket. We’re in good standing. We hold our heads high. But it’s time for a roll call on the no calls: traitors.
My Irish side’s clan has held Paddy’s Day luncheon at 12:00 o’clock noon since the early 1960s in Minneapolis. If I’m hence corrected that it’s gone on since the 1700s, I’ll edit this. Once hosted by our uncles and their cousins at Murray’s downtown, “the home of the butter knife steak,” our faithful organizing cousin years ago hiked us up northeast to a Polish-Czech restaurant, which is fine. They’re grand, really they are. Irish get along with everyone now, and our shame about being conquered for 800 years powers our gift of double-talk such that we can tell you how to go to hell and enjoy the ride. Anyway, it’s easier to park outside downtown.
But just imagine your own lineage now. Think of all them parked in the graveyard, or cremated, the quickie dust-to-dust method. If you look back four or five generations, you know there can be thousands of your relatives, back there having lived lives, or died shortly after birth, or old as Methuselah with their rheumatism, abscessed teeth, and no ibuprofen to numb the pain — all come down to little old you, having your dramas, worried that no one thinks of you on TikTok. Then glance into the future, where you’ll be dust, and all your kids, nieces, nephews twice-removed, and grand-whatsits — all of them are pulverized. You are dust, and they are, too. And you all have a dust nap together.
This is a lot of people, people. Your whole tree, roots and limbs, and you making the trunk, because it’s all about you, ancestry is, weighs heavily on the world. How can you vouch for yourself? What have you done since the last Paddy’s Day, young one coming up? Where do you work now? What the hell is that, forensic information system thingy, climate justice advocate, sustainable energy mobile 3D print startup something, MakeIt Meetup organizer. Toning it down now before my left hand balls up into a fist at the nearest cloud, all because I can’t figure out what the hell kids actually do. I should know. We actually have friends whose esoteric role in the startup seed money tech world messed our heads about 10 years ago, so I’m not aiming this at you kids these days, Kids, why I oughta tell you ..
But hell, think of all the no-shows from today. If alive, their attendance was required. Think of all the uneaten bangers and colcannon. Pathetic. Probably 50 more than the 50 that showed up, did not show. So, it takes a lot of spice to forsake your line, your forbears, your blood. Question is, really, are you in line, or out of line. The ancestry branches and roots have an excuse to no-call-no-show: they’re not born yet, or they’re dead. They’re not dead to us; they’re just dead. What’s your excuse? Want to know what we said about you? Too bad; you had to be there. Sláinte.