When I was younger, I spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house. They lived about 7 minutes away from our house, and I loved to have my mom drop me off for the day. I would walk in, hug and kiss my grandma, and she would proceed to lecture me on always being barefoot and how pneumonia would kill me. She would force me to wear my grandpa's (very) smelly slippers, and then she would toddle off to "water the back yard patio," or go watch her "novellas" on telemundo. I would then go and explore all the "off-limits" areas of the house, usually my grandpa's office, or great-grandma mary's room (great gramma at the time still lived in Montana, but when her and great grandpa would visit they'd always stay in that room). There were so many treasures, like swords and makeup (my grandma being a Spaniard and a cosmotologist), to play around with.
But the best part was walking down their street to the McCarthy's house. Dan McCarthy was (and still is) a tall, white-haired, white-bearded bear of a man who loved his golden retreivers-and his wife, Cathy. I remember that the garage door would always be open, Dan always watching football with a Coors in his hand. That man sure did love to tap the rockies. Cathy would invite me in to have a cookie and a soda, and then Dan would proceed to tell me about how in Ireland, if you were born on St Paddy's, they would strip ya' naked and send you marching through the town with your butt painted green. Mind you, I don't know if that's even true. I don't even want to google it or look it up anywhere on the interwebs, because I don't need to rinse my eyes out with bleach. But at the time I was a naive little 7 year old girl, and I believed that large man. I mean, his name was Daniel McCarthy. Of course he knows about Irish traditions.
17 Years later I still remember that afternoon, running back up to my grandparents house sobbing, babbling about how "dan is gonna paint my butt green" and begging my grandparents not to let him. I also remember him laughing as he came up to the house to tell me he was just kidding, and apologized for scaring me. I forgave him, until my birthday came around and he came and threw me over his shoulder declairing his intentions. Everyone laughed at the joke, but not me. I ran and hid and changed my clothes, because I was embarrassed that I had wet my pants as a 2nd grader. And I was convinced a 3rd pair of underwear would deter any butt painting that year.
Well, that was a fun trip down memory lane. now to leave you with a little present from me.
