Don’t Kiss Me; I’m Not Irish.

How much booziness is OK with you? This question matters if you’re interested in celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Norfolk.

Ahead of the big day, there will be three celebrations: Shamrockin’ Roll at Town Point Park, Shamrockin’ In Ghent, and The St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Each of these is more in homage to alcohol than remembrance of a saint’s life.

If you like to party hearty right out in public where everyone can see how you look when you’re drunk, you’ll enthusiastically make your way to where it’s happening.

And you think, “At least let’s take the kids to the parade.” Uh…this isn’t a parade down Main Street at the end of a day with Disney. Promoters talk “family” but historically, it’s been possible to see guys puke on the sidewalk, urinate into the street.

If you not only don’t get drunk, but you don’t like to be among others when they’re drunk…stay home, y’all. These festivities will be awash in bright green joy juice.

I, personally, don’t like to be with friends who are  drinking hard liquor. Maybe wine's alright, but booze gets people all loosey and goosey, laughing too loudly at jokes that aren’t funny, saying things better left unsaid.

During my professional careers, I studiously avoided anything where alcohol was part of the agenda. Stories of co-workers ripping off their clothes and dancing on the table…uh-uh, not for me. The fellow who called himself, "Captain Morgan," and who laughed about taking home the wrong wife after the Christmas festivity. No parties! Then one end of the school year, a teacher confronted me, “ Get over your anti-party prejudice.”

Me, “No, thank you.’

She, “Oh, alright. But at least show up at my house. If you don’t, I’ll be offended. You don’t have to drink, although I’d like you to try my homemade dandelion wine. Just be there.”

So I went. I sipped her dandelion wine and it wasn’t actually terrible.

The party, however, was as I’d feared. I wasn’t there fifteen minutes before a colleague draped himself over me on one side and slurred into my right ear, “I’ve alwaysh been too intimidated to tell you, but I think you’re aweshome.” And here came another colleague who slung himself over my other side, saying, “I’ve alwaysh reshpected you sho mush, but I wush shcared to shay sho.”

I ran to my car and was gone. My first and last professional party. If I wouldn’t put up with that nonsense for work reasons, why do it for St. Patrick’s Day? I’m not even Irish.

Am I anti-alcohol? Not a bit. I feel entitled to my share of sherry, and I like chilled Chardonnay. However, the St. Patrick’s Day whoopla you’re likely to encounter in Norfolk is all about getting drunk, drinking to excess, to the point where you make a donkey of yourself. Others will naysay this, but you just read the truth. From where I sit, St. Patrick needs to go to rehab.

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