I’ve been teaching high school for seventeen and one-half years. Each year, St. Patrick’s Day comes and students want to pinch me (and each other). My first year of teaching, I had absolutely no idea that people pinched those who didn’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. Of course, I didn’t wear green and spent the day dodging pinches from overly zealous students, who weren’t even Irish. Most of the kids didn’t wear green either, but I think they wanted to be pinched.
A few years later, I started teaching at a different school. March rolled around, and it was time to wear the green. Almost everyone wore green and no one talked about pinching each other. I was shocked by the students’ level of participation. My guess is that many of these kids were actually Irish and more pride in their heritage than simply wanting to pinch someone.
Move ahead to 2012 and my dearest St. Patrick’s Day pinch memory just happened today (February 2). My school is planning a fundraiser to raise money to donate to breast cancer research. This event involves the entire school wearing pink on one day of the week. For the rest of the week, the organizers want students to wear different colors on different days to bring awareness to other charitable causes. The plans were announced at the beginning of the school day. At the end of the first hour class, one of my very non-Irish students walked up to me and said, “I think we should be able to pinch students who don’t wear the colors each day. Just like St. Patrick’s Day.” His face was gleaming with pride, that he came up with such a wonderful idea that would allow him to pinch anyone and everyone.
His twinkling eye reminded me that I better wear green on St. Patrick’s Day this year.