Wistful

 

Tonight the students are running amok because it is Saint Patrick’s Day.  Only in recent years has this holiday grown to be such a bacchanalia. Scantily dressed women, girls really, and young men/boys in wife beaters dyed green and bearing a shamrock screen-print stagger from bar to bar. Having waiting for hours this morning in a line several hundred deep they crowded into bars. The taps are places with names like Dublin Square and PT O’Malley’s. Tonight they have been drinking their fill. 

Green beer or traditional Irish brews like Guinness, Smithwick’s and Harp it doesn’t matter.  Dram after dram is quaffed. A shot of Jameson’s is raised by these temporarily immortals.  To you, to me, to sex acts, to the Spartans they toast them all. By night’s end they will either be back in bed unconscious but not really sleeping.  Or they will be committing acts that tomorrow through their meat cleaver headaches will cause them worry about pregnancies, STDs or criminal charges. One or two of them may pass off this mortal coil to the regret and wailing of loving families.  This is rare but once every two or four years it happens.

No this is not a warning.  No this is not a longing to be among the bustle and hustle that is tonight’s scrum.  There are no hangovers that are fondly remembered.  What this is can best be called a wistful moment of memory of that short space where you taste the joy of endless time. To them as they walk from bar to bar grabbing ass and talking trash, savor this night as much as you will hate making the call on the big porcelain phone tomorrow.