Student: “Are you wearing green because it’s St. Patrick’s Day?”
Me: “Yup.”
Student: “What does the green stand for?”
Me: “Avarice, envy, and gangrene.”
Student: “Huh?”
Me: “The beautiful, rolling green hills of Ireland.”
Student: “Oh.”
Liam: “How does the Irish Santa look different from ours?”
Me: (mumbling) “He’s carrying a beer, and he’s drunk.”
Liam: “What?”
Me: “He’s wearing green instead of red.”
Me: My mother is watching some BBC period drama on Netflix. The giggling and whining about dowries is killllling me.
Ryan: Have you even seen The Quiet Man? That’s my kind of take on dowries. Beer and fighting, just like God and the Irish intended.
Me: Well, I come with my own Waterford and a paid-off college education, if that does it for you.
Ryan: I have a box of my grandmother’s china and a baseball signed by the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates.
Me: I can’t resist a good baseball, especially when it’s been handled by pirates.
Ryan: Generally, I’m against letting pirates touch my balls.
Me: It’s the hook-hand, isn’t it?
Ryan: It is now.
Ryan: The kids with their dad?
Me: Yup. I might pull a Risky Business in a minute and do some air guitar in my underpants.
Ryan: Just don’t start a brothel in your house, or you’ll spend the entire weekend terribly concerned about an overpriced crystal egg.
Me: You just know his parents were at some high-end swinger’s weekend…some Eyes Wide Shut number.
Ryan: You mean where they wear masks, and could just as easily be attending a human sacrifice?
Me: WASP boners as far as the eye can see…
Ryan: WASPS don’t have “boners”, and they can only get them if they throw back a Cyalis with their single-malt.
Me: Thank God we’re just poor Irish-Italian immigrant trash. Our people only needed a couch and healthy dose of shame, and it was on.
Ryan: Shame is Irish lubricant. Also liquor, let us not forget the liquor.
Me: And the Italian side?
Ryan: Italians are passionate. Any high surface will do. Countertop…Tables…Hood of a Fiat…
Me: Back of a Vespa?
Ryan: I’ve heard you can’t get pregnant on the back of a Vespa.
Me: I think we just explained why you have so many cousins, Casanova.