Happy St. Patrick's Day

My most vivid St. Patrick's Day memory (from before I learned that the way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day is to try as hard as possible to obliterate memory altogether) is from when I was 14 and our high school marching band got to march in New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade. (Yes, the one that still enshrines vicious homophobia. Not really on our radar back in 1975.)

We took a schoolbus over to Manhattan, found our place in the queue, and lined up with our instruments (I played sousaphone). And we waited.

And waited....

It was about 29 degrees, and marching in place and rubbing our hands together would only go so far. After a half hour or so we had all abandoned our positions because it was obvious we weren't going anytime soon. There was a building with a warm lobby nearby, but we couldn't hang out there long before they would get annoyed and tell us to buzz off. So we would go in for five minutes or so out of every hour just to take the chill off.

And we waited.

Three hours we spent freezing our asses off out there before we got the order to start. That's when the fun really began.

To start with, the valves on my sousaphone froze up about 15 minutes into the parade. I spent the rest of the parade just pretending to play.

And as it happened, my band pants were too small for me. They weren't just highwaters (that I was used to, I'm afraid); they were too tight as well. Which meant the zipper had a regrettable tendency to open itself up over time. And I had gloves on, so I couldn't do anything about it. So I did most of the parade with my fly wide open.

By the time we were marching, the TV coverage was over. I suppose that's probably merciful. In fact, pretty much everybody had already gone home, except the New York City cops.

Who were pointing. And laughing.

It was all over eventually, although it seemed endless at the time. We packed up the bus and drove back to Jersey. Apparently we left a clarinetist in Manhattan. Her parents were not happy. The band director didn't come back the following year. I didn't know any of this at the time, but it dovetails nicely with my own memories of the fiasco.

I can say with some satisfaction that every St. Patrick's Day since then has been better than that one, even if they haven't been as memorable.

[That's all, folks]