St. Patrick's Day Parade + vomiting!

Act 2 Sc. 2 Page 54

Allison: "St. Patrick's Day is all about drinking beer and whiskey and vomiting in the street."

Sunday, March 15, 2009

St. Patrick's Day Massacre

It happens every year, generally on the Saturday immediately preceding St. Patrick's Day. I'm not sure what St. Patrick's day is like in California or Texas, but in most of the northeastern US, at least in the big cities, it seems to be a fairly big deal. In the city where I live, we have a long parade, and afterwards, a lot of people get very drunk.

I'm mostly Irish -- 3/4ths, actually, but I really don't pay much attention to St. Patrick's day in general. I knew it was coming up, but didn't fully realize it until I took a walk last night. As I walked, I passed throngs of green clad stumbling leprechauns. Few appeared to be Irish, though many were drunk. By 6PM, every bar I passed was packed, and vomit ran in the streets.

I passed an accident scene as well. There was no apparent damage to either vehicle, but it may well have destroyed a young woman's life. As I passed, an officer was already at the scene, and the woman was attempting to stand on one foot, apparently to show the officer how intoxicated she was. She clearly wasn't going through this exercise to show she was sober. She was sobbing, and her makeup ran down her cheeks as she swayed and hopped about on the sidewalk. She looked as if she could have been a young teacher, or perhaps a graduate student. She was young, and not unattractive, and I doubt that she'd ever been arrested before. I wanted to call out to her and advise her to get a lawyer, and to tell her that she was not required to take field sobriety tests, but it would have been too late, anyway. Her performance on the one leg stand test was pretty bad. If she had decided to take a cab, she could have avoided arrest, and if she had known her rights, she might have avoided a conviction. Obviously, she hasn't been convicted yet, but I expect that she will be.

This young woman was one of many casualties of the St. Patrick's Day massacre. At least one day out of every year bars and the entertainment industry team up with local governments and others to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. And everyone wins, except everyone else. Bars and bartenders sell lots of alcohol and make lots of money on St. Patrick's day, and the government makes lots of arrests. Each first offender convicted of DWI generates a significant income for the state by way of fines (maybe $1250), the court surcharge (about $1000), and the DMV's "driver responsibility" assessment ($750). Seems like a setup to me.

Of course, drivers aren't the only victims -- surely other people are injured as well. Though they may escape arrest, even the "responsible" drinkers wake up the next morning with less money and more of a hangover than they had the day before. Is drinking to excess in the celebration of a saint that we, collectively, know practically nothing about . . . fun? Or have we been duped into spending our money to make ourselves sick?

If I want to have a drink, I don't need an excuse. I don't need to wear green or to proclaim my Irish heritage. And I don't need to participate in the massacre.