I’m Scottish. Well, my great great grandpa was Scottish. Well, we think he was. I know there’s some Polish in there too, but like, my last name sounds like a banned Highlands Games event, so we’ve gotta be close, if not close enough. Every Saint Patrick’s Day, I dress in orange from head to toe to piss off the local four-leafed fuckboys, and every year I get my shit rocked by some drunk guy from Boston in a Dropkick Murphy’s-and-whiskey fueled rage. But this year was different. This year, I got drunk.
And I don’t just mean drunk. I mean belligerently drunk. I mean dangerously, get sent to the hospital and then get rejected from the hospital drunk. I drank a whole 1952 Macallan in one sitting, and in my scotch fueled stupor, I found myself face to face with a ghost. It wasn’t some random boring ghost either, some unfulfilled schoolteacher or my grandfather or something. Nah. The foremost Patron Saint of Ireland came to me in my drunken fever dream and sat down next to me to tell me the error of my ways.
Saint Patrick, The Apostle of Ireland began to regale me with the story of his deeds. He told me about his rise to Sainthood and how he was kidnapped as a child and taken as a slave by Irish pirates. Yeah, I guess British slaves used to be a thing. Who knew? Saint Paddy knew, apparently, and be warned: he will not shut up about “reverse racism” once you get him started.
He was a slave for like, less than a decade, before escaping and returning to the land of his captors, where he would become a bishop. He said something about chasing the snakes out of Ireland and being a hero to the people, which sounded like some drunk bullshitting on his end, but I knew where this was going. Before he could start trying to convert me into the world’s strongest Catholic altar boy, I told that God-fearing paddy to “fuck off.” I didn’t give a shit about him or his stupid holiday.
Well, he didn’t take to kindly to that. A few slur filled exchanges and a joke about potato famines later and next thing I knew, he was beating me upside the head with his crosier, cursing me out for being “an ignorant little git” and a “wee Scottish maggot.”
I tried to fight back, but I could barely stand up, let alone throw a punch at the pious little bastard. I scrambled to the door and fell out into the hall. I heard him bellow something about me being a “lickarse” and something about “ma mums” as he charged out after me.
He kicked me down the stairs one flight at a time, cursing me as he slid down the railing in a whimsical, blessed rage. I stumbled to my feet once I found my way to the first floor, but there was Ol’ Saint Paddy calling me “a protestant son of a whore” and other insults that mostly focused around my mom and her choices. He knocked me back on my ass repeatedly, shouting “and stay down yah dry shite!”
Finally, a group of drunk students came stumbling through the lobby. I called out for them, screamed to them that God’s representative for the Emerald Isle was taking my ass to the first national bank of bodily harm. As I said this, though, the ghost dissipated, presumably returning to heaven to be with the other great Catholic Saints. My RA came to see what all the racket was about, and soon an ambulance came to take me to the hospital so I could get my stomach pumped. The official story says I got drunk and fell down eight flights of stairs, but the truth is that a Catholic ghost kicked the fear of God into my soul and a fear of hard food into my mouth for the next three to four weeks.
I think I’m gonna be going to mass next week.