My Patient Husband woke me up this morning with, “In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, I made Irish Cream coffee.”
Try wrapping your head around that while waking up. I had trouble.
Now I have Irish friends who walk around slathered in shamrocks, and my extended family has Irish relatives and Mc-this and Mac-that, and they don’t drink Irish cream. But another friend of mine, who is somewhat Irish in the sense that she was born and spent her first twenty-five years in Ireland, came here briefly, moved back to Ireland, moved back to the US, and still owns property in Ireland…she loves the stuff.
She has a friend who showed up haggard to work one day. “My doctor told me I have to cut down on the drinking,” she said. My friend asked what she meant. The woman said, “He told me I can’t have Irish cream in my morning coffee.”
My friend, with that accent I’d love to bottle, said to me, “She said the artificial stuff didn’t cut it. She just wanted to have that little bit of flavor in her coffee. I told her the tablespoon she put in her coffee couldn’t possibly matter that much.”
I said, “Now when she’s pouring it into her Corn Flakes like I do–” and my friend busted up laughing, then volunteered to come share breakfast with me on a regular basis.
Anyhow, back to my Patient Husband. I was still wrapping my head around “Saint Patrick’s Day” when he told me he’d loaded up his iPod with plenty of Irish music.
You know, U2.
And I stiiiiiiiill haven’t fouuuuuuuund what I’m looking for…
So he’s leaving for work and I’m heading downstairs, when despite the holiday I get regaled by Polish music, as Kiddo#3 sings, “Again and again and again and again and again!”
You see, recently my iPod played a randomized playlist, and Weird Al Yankovic’s “You’re Pitiful” came on. After the song, Kiddo#2 came to me and quietly, as if struggling to figure out this bizarre world into which she’d been thrust against her will, said to me, “I heard a song kind of like that, except it said You’re Beautiful.
Cue the next five minutes explaining to Kiddo#2 the concept of the “parody.” Which you’d think she’d have already intuited, living with me and her Patient Father.
She asked me for a Weird Al playlist for her own iPod, and she’s listened to nothing else for the past week. I’m sure this is creating in her a strange perplexity whereby she’ll know the parodies to a whole bunch of songs she’s never heard, creating yet another gash with reality when she finally hears the actual songs and they sound unnatural. Which is, to be fair, how I came to the movie world: I read hundreds of MAD Magazine parodies of movies I never saw.
And so this morning, with Irish Cream and Irish music (Cranberries, anyone? Texas?) in my head, I went downstairs looking for breakfast only to hear one of my kids warbling “One More Minute” with no clue whatsoever why it was so funny.
Too many jokes too early. I’m sorry. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.
