And the Rest of the Day to YOU

I'm Irish, like really Irish, in case you couldn't tell by my dark curly hair, pale freckled un-tannable skin, and my blues eyes. I love being Irish, there's just something about it!  On St. Patrick's Day when I was in kindergarten, my teacher sent me to the front office to deliver the attendance to the secretary. When I walked in, there were a lot of people gathered around- the Principal, the VP, and the visiting Superintendent. My Principal said to me "Top of the morning to you!"

All eyes were on me, all "old people eyes" that is, but I gathered my courage and boldly proclaimed "And the rest of the day to you!" Well, everyone got a big kick out of it, the office was howling with laughter. I almost started to cry because I thought they were laughing at me. I quickly dropped off the note with secretary and scurried off back to class.

A few hours later there was a knock on the door and in walked the Principal with a piece of paper in her hand. Uh oh, I just knew it had to be about me, because I had said something wrong and embarrassed her in front of the "important people."

She asked everyone to sit down on the reading carpet and she began to tell them about a student in their class who had proudly displayed her love for the Irish. It was ME! They had created some award for me because everyone was so impressed by my boldness and my Irish knowledge!

I was so excited, so excited. When she told the class what I had done, they all looked at me like "uh, what's the big deal? "Who cares?" "Can we get back to building our lego masterpiece?"

But I really didn't care what they thought, the Principal of my elementary school was impressed with ME, ME, - she created an award that hung in the front office, for ME!

My family was happy, but they were kind of like, "Duh, of course that's what you say!"

This is me in kindergarten, wasn't I cute?!

To this day, it's one of the fond memories that sticks with me; something I think about every St. Paddy's Day. Of course, my celebrations these days are bit more tame than my CELEBRATIONS of yore. And since I'm one of those freak of nature Irish folks who hates Guinness Beer, I plan on putting some green food coloring in my nice Diet Coke.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, I hope it brings much luck! Do you have any plans? Anything fun, or same old, same old?