#106. St. Patrick’s Day (Saturday, March 17, 2012)

What was your best day…of experiencing something for the first time (way later than you should have)?

One common theme that will come up often here is that, growing up, I tended to be very late in catching on to the “adult” treatment of a lot of things – i.e. I’d view them with a childlike innocence for far too long. Holidays were one big example. And in this case, it was the drinking holiday of the year – St. Patrick’s Day – whose actual significance hadn’t actually come to me until I was twenty-one years old.

So despite being in my last year of university, this was my first St. Patty’s Day experience. And Kurt Huang – my suitemate and close friend – had gathered all the troops in Waterloo for this big day, calling in Chase and Colin from Queen’s and Toronto, and even managing to convince our other suitemate Rahul (after multiple whipping imitations) to ignore his girlfriend’s forbidding to come out with us as well.

First stop was the backyard patio of the university’s Bombshelter Pub. It was packed, but we were able to get a table right in the middle and started going through pitchers. One of Rahul’s friends stopped by and gave me one of those plastic mini-leprechaun hats with an elastic band, and Kurt told me to keep it on for the rest of the day because it looked awesome.¹

Anyways, the crowd of us on the patio had started getting to chanting when Kurt got a text from our other suitemate Casey telling him that her and a few others (who we were waiting for) were still in the apartment…playing Monopoly. For some reason, the sheer stupidity of that seemed to trigger Kurt and the next thing we know we’re walking back to the apartment. Once we’re there, some kind of argument ensues that ends with Casey in tears (for an unknown reason), which puts a damper on everything and causes Kurt to lash out even more on how we’re wasting St. Patrick’s Day.

Eventually, in a smaller group with just Kurt, Chase, and Colin², we do go to a bunch of places. Back to the Bombshelter, then to some Laurier³ guy’s front yard party (during which we saw a police car drive up, and Kurt had to reassure me that I was still going to graduate university), then to the Irish pub next door to our apartment.

It should be noted that this was literally my first time ever drinking alcohol in more than one place in a single day⁴, so even if it never got to Kurt’s high expectations, the whole experience was pretty great on my end.

The best part of the night, though, had to be after we returned home for the last time at around midnight. Mike and Gerald – who had been doing their own St. Patrick’s Day thing – came by, and we were just chilling in the living room, when what followed was one of the most inanely entertaining forty-five minutes of my life.

It started when, walking back to the couch, I casually slapped my knuckles on the door hinge, and the other guys reacted as if I had just broken my hand – because it sure sounded that way, even though I didn’t feel a thing. (I didn’t break anything.)

Then the conversation turned to girls, and quickly got to something like this:

Kurt (to Jeff): And Clara, you still have a crush on her, don’t you?
Mike: Oh Clara, she’s pretty good-looking. You got good taste, man.
Jeff: Well, not anymore. She does have a boyfriend, and as you clearly recall, I did screw up pretty bad last year when I did the whole approaching her without talking thing.
Mike/Kurt/Gerald: (more remarks, led by Mike)
Jeff: You know, there is this other girl; she’s in that Financial Statement Analysis class that you guys are taking… (stopping myself realizing that I’m a teaching assistant (TA) for that class (#113), and am deathly afraid of any perceived conflict of interest)
Mike: Well, who is it?
Kurt: Is it Kendra? (Note: it wasn’t)
Jeff: …sorry I can’t say, I’m TAing that class, so I don’t want to get in trouble.
Mike: Come on man, that’s bullshit. You can’t just pull something like that…
Colin: …yeah, what’s wrong with you man? If you’re not going to tell us, then don’t bring it up in the first place.
Kurt: Is it Kendra?
Chase: Seriously guys. If you’re gonna talk on and on about all these girls, at least show me a picture.
(We walk over to Kurt’s laptop)
Jeff: Okay, but not that Financial Statement Analysis girl.

After about twenty minutes of that, the topic of Pokemon somehow came up, at which point I mentioned the hack game I had made, Pokemon: Ash’s Quest, that had been designed to follow the original anime, and that I had posted videos of it on YouTube. Which was followed by fifteen minutes of us watching a poorly-coded sinking of the St. Anne and Gyarados attack (episodes 15 and 16), and then by Kurt calling out: “What are we doing here? We’re watching fucking Pokemon!”

He was right. Literally at every place we went to after, someone there made a comment on how awesome it was.
Rahul conked out early.
Laurier was the other university in town. It was known to be…less academically-rigorous than Waterloo, to put it simply.
At this point in my life, I was still keeping count of how many times in my life I had drank. Those were my 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th times.