“Mom! I can’t find anything green to wear!” This was a yearly ritual in my home on March 17 as I would realize the dreaded St Patrick’s Day was upon me. Now almost the exclusive domain of adults and a convenient excuse to get hammered, in 1972 Patty’s day was deadly serious business for the average 10 year old kid in Amarillo. Not only were we still paddled, kept after school and even held back a grade, we were still allowed to touch each other, not always in pleasant ways;. St Patrick’s Day was the zenith of legal harassment.
Mom would usually end up pinning a piece of green thing to my shirt, sometimes paper, sometimes something I could not identify. Others would, in acts of sheer desperation, put green dots on their hands using their handy four color pens that were all the rage then. It was a risky gambit, as green was usually expected to be obvious and those who did not have the color prominently displayed were likely to receive the pinch of retribution from an old, dead, Irish priest who so painfully invaded our lives every early spring.
Being before the age of respecting personal space, March 17th was an annual hell where kids gleefully ran up to one another pinching, like an enraged fire ant, anyone who was not more or less painted green. Those of us not wearing green clothing would walk around with the green dot on our hands, often applied by a sympathetic teacher, held in front of our chest like a magic talisman, praying we could get from one class to the next without being assaulted by the sea of pinching beast.
Then of course there were the bullies who would pinch, regardless of whether or not their victim had the shielding green and then earnestly threaten to beat into paper pulp anyone who tried to get (by kids rules) their two pinch retaliation.
It was a different time and not as horrible as it sounds, because it was all we knew. Little boys sometimes innocently kissed little girls without being expelled, or registered as a sex offender, and Saint Patrick, for most of us, was the patron saint of pain. Yet we still found the child-like joy than can only come from causing others brief, but eye-popping pain. Now that I think of it, I’d much rather have had snakes.