LJ Idol Season 7: Week 17; Open Topic
"What makes the grass grow green?"
"BLOOD!" I yell as I pound my stick hard into the snake.
"LOUDER!" he screams back at me. "What makes the grass grow green?"
"Blood....Blood....BLOOD!"
I pound my staff into the midsection of the snake. I look up at the man outfitted in robes of green and he's pleased. He's very pleased by my efforts, as is the crowd that's gathered around to watch the festivities.
"Now claim your prize..."
The crowd around me applauds as I pick up the snake that I just beat to death and slowly bring him toward my mouth. In one quick movement, I bite of his head as the crowd starts chanting my name.
We don’t pay any attention to how barbaric all this sounds. It is our way, our tradition and has been that way since before any of us were even alive.
Some traditions had died out, or simply were considered too barbaric for even our kinds. New rules and regulations were enacted to “protect” us from ourselves. I was relieved, personally....others weren’t so happy about the changes. After all, tradition is tradition and no one should touch something sacred such as that.
But ALICE had to be stopped. Many of us knew it had gone too far.
What’s ALICE?
No one knows what it stands for...but it’s a way for the knights, and whoever else, to show devotion to the Saint and his posse of merry followers. A massive pool of every liquid known to man, the grossest, most disgusting things you might ever imagined...and you could get down on your hands and knees and worship the court while surrounding yourself in the mess of bodily fluids.
Nothing could make me ever consider such worship, not even to show my full support and adoration for the court.
I’m one of few female in a world of men. Sure, the staffs the women build are smaller, we take tree branches and make shillelaghs instead of the massive cudgels that the men-folk have to procure. For two weeks, they carry around their decorated tree trunks with pride. I much prefer the smaller tree branch, even that took me hours upon hours of sanding and painting to get it just right. It had to have so many snakes, so many shamrocks...certain traditions we had to abide by that had also been in place since long before we were of this very world.
It all sounds so surreal to an outsider, but for us, it was merely St. Patrick’s Day. While I can’t make it back to my college this year, I find myself dreaming of snake invasions and the utter brutality that followed (they were plastic snakes, of course). I remember the hours I spent making my shillelagh with my pledge sisters. Sanding, carving and painting away. I had never done anything like that in my entire life, my craftiness is that of a 2 year old after all. I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler even. Yet somehow, I carved this beautiful stick that I proudly carried around campus for the week’s celebrations and mashed plastic snakes to death before biting off their head to a crowd of cheering college students.
We elected a court, with St. Patrick and all of his merry men. They would dress up in traditional Irish garb all week and be the center of attention, often driving around in a van with duct taped windows so it was a mystery as to what went on behind those doors. But for a week, they were celebrities. Everyone wanted to be where they were, a party wasn’t a party without them. Girls would flock to them. The party was so massive, classes are always cancelled two days to allow us to celebrate without missing any major exams.
While some of the rituals have calmed down, such as ALICE which no longer remains due to health and safety hazards (yes, there would be bodily fluids, everything from urine to feces to vomit...), there are many things that continue to go forth during each and every year. Many things that I could barely touch on. It’s a whole different world, one you’d have to experience to truly understand every little tradition, every little detail. It was “ours”. We may not have been known for our football team, or for having an exciting night life....but we had St. Pats.
I went to a small school in the middle of nowhere, they chose St. Patrick’s Day as their day back in the early days of the university. They even made St. Patrick the Patron Saint of Engineering for an excuse to celebrate. Stories of the party have made their way into magazines, such as the time when the Anheuser-Busch truck was on it’s way back to St. Louis when all of a sudden, a call came in to turn around and go back to Rolla. Yes, the beer truck didn’t even make it an hour away before the town of Rolla ran out of beer. That story actually ran in Playboy. Who ever would have thought us corn-fed, small town college kids would ever be noticed by Playboy?
The parties are epic even to this day. Girls from all around come in. They are known as “imports”. Basically the girls who come with the hopes of meeting a boyfriend or at least getting laid. The ratio of boys to girls in Rolla is fairly high. Five males for every female? Yes, the girls have their pick of the litter. Of course, the imports are always obvious by their slutty attire. A Rolla girl is always more laid-back, choosing to chug the beers alongside the boys instead of standing by the sidelines sipping a flavored cocktail.
Shark attacks were also rampant this time of year. That simply meant a St. Pats rep would randomly, out of nowhere, bite you on the butt as hard as you could imagine. It wasn’t uncommon to see girls guarding one another because another sign of an import was the terrified scream and the beating that came after such an event. The Rolla girls knew better than to ever leave your behind exposed during St. Pat’s without one of your most trusted friends guarding it.
All the fun, all the mayhem ended once I got my degree and left the small college town for bigger and supposedly better things. I always wanted to experience a larger college, feeling as if I had missed out...and I went to graduate school at Clemson University. While I loved it there, it really lacked a certain something that I can’t put my finger on...there really is something magical about a small, tight knit community. Something I have yearned for ever since I left the campus of UMR.
I miss those days more than I ever would have imagined back then. At the time, I thought life was always just one big party after another, and that friends would always be as easy to make as they were in college. I no longer drink, nor do I have the desire too....but something about the spirit, the excitement...all of that was an experience I’d love to re-live once again.
Of course, I have been back. I went back just last year with my now ex-husband. I had high expectations of it being just like old times, experiencing the old traditions, meeting old friends and falling into place as if we never left.
But nothing in life works out the way you plan, huh? People grow apart, traditions get changed and a whole new class of students comes in, leaving very little room for us "old" folk. Sure, there is a certain amount of respect that comes from surviving the mayhem, but you will never again get to experience it the way that it was. Dabbling your feet back into the mucky waters of ALICE will not get you any closer to your youth, it will only taunt you with the memories of things you can no longer experience, experiences that no longer exist to you.
But at the end of the day, everyone grows up and must leave the mischievous fun of youthfulness and drunken sex behind one day. Unless of course, you’re Charlie Sheen, but not many of us are (thankfully so).
Real life comes in, carries you swiftly into adulthood and leaves all of that behind. I am very proud of where I am today,but I still can’t help but cherish the memories. Every St. Patricks Day, I get a little reminiscent and excited to re-live those moments, even if only briefly in my head while sitting in my cubicle, typing away at yet another pricing analysis. It gets me by, but sometimes I wonder if that's enough?
It is true what they say about memories being more valuable than any material object you can buy. Even as I am living the mundane life of an office monkey, barely getting time to breathe much less have a social life. I have my memories which can always bring a smile to my face and a story that I am proud to share (and hopefully will make someone laugh).
And St. Patrick’s Day brings back some of the best memories of my life, and while my 3 year wedding anniversary would fall on the day before St. Pats (not a coincidence, it was St. Patrick’s day themed), I don’t let that cloud the joyous memories of my youth. It also reminds me that while those experiences are in my past, my life is full of opportunities to create new, wondrous memories that I will also cherish just the same way one day.
With a little luck, I might even get to go back there again one day during St. Pat’s without an ex-husband to drag me down. I can drink my green beer, watch the streets get painted green, and relish in all the memories of an amazing life that I have had, and celebrate the wonderful future I still have in store for me.
After all, I am not that old yet!
"BLOOD!" I yell as I pound my stick hard into the snake.
"LOUDER!" he screams back at me. "What makes the grass grow green?"
"Blood....Blood....BLOOD!"
I pound my staff into the midsection of the snake. I look up at the man outfitted in robes of green and he's pleased. He's very pleased by my efforts, as is the crowd that's gathered around to watch the festivities.
"Now claim your prize..."
The crowd around me applauds as I pick up the snake that I just beat to death and slowly bring him toward my mouth. In one quick movement, I bite of his head as the crowd starts chanting my name.
We don’t pay any attention to how barbaric all this sounds. It is our way, our tradition and has been that way since before any of us were even alive.
Some traditions had died out, or simply were considered too barbaric for even our kinds. New rules and regulations were enacted to “protect” us from ourselves. I was relieved, personally....others weren’t so happy about the changes. After all, tradition is tradition and no one should touch something sacred such as that.
But ALICE had to be stopped. Many of us knew it had gone too far.
What’s ALICE?
No one knows what it stands for...but it’s a way for the knights, and whoever else, to show devotion to the Saint and his posse of merry followers. A massive pool of every liquid known to man, the grossest, most disgusting things you might ever imagined...and you could get down on your hands and knees and worship the court while surrounding yourself in the mess of bodily fluids.
Nothing could make me ever consider such worship, not even to show my full support and adoration for the court.
I’m one of few female in a world of men. Sure, the staffs the women build are smaller, we take tree branches and make shillelaghs instead of the massive cudgels that the men-folk have to procure. For two weeks, they carry around their decorated tree trunks with pride. I much prefer the smaller tree branch, even that took me hours upon hours of sanding and painting to get it just right. It had to have so many snakes, so many shamrocks...certain traditions we had to abide by that had also been in place since long before we were of this very world.
It all sounds so surreal to an outsider, but for us, it was merely St. Patrick’s Day. While I can’t make it back to my college this year, I find myself dreaming of snake invasions and the utter brutality that followed (they were plastic snakes, of course). I remember the hours I spent making my shillelagh with my pledge sisters. Sanding, carving and painting away. I had never done anything like that in my entire life, my craftiness is that of a 2 year old after all. I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler even. Yet somehow, I carved this beautiful stick that I proudly carried around campus for the week’s celebrations and mashed plastic snakes to death before biting off their head to a crowd of cheering college students.
We elected a court, with St. Patrick and all of his merry men. They would dress up in traditional Irish garb all week and be the center of attention, often driving around in a van with duct taped windows so it was a mystery as to what went on behind those doors. But for a week, they were celebrities. Everyone wanted to be where they were, a party wasn’t a party without them. Girls would flock to them. The party was so massive, classes are always cancelled two days to allow us to celebrate without missing any major exams.
While some of the rituals have calmed down, such as ALICE which no longer remains due to health and safety hazards (yes, there would be bodily fluids, everything from urine to feces to vomit...), there are many things that continue to go forth during each and every year. Many things that I could barely touch on. It’s a whole different world, one you’d have to experience to truly understand every little tradition, every little detail. It was “ours”. We may not have been known for our football team, or for having an exciting night life....but we had St. Pats.
I went to a small school in the middle of nowhere, they chose St. Patrick’s Day as their day back in the early days of the university. They even made St. Patrick the Patron Saint of Engineering for an excuse to celebrate. Stories of the party have made their way into magazines, such as the time when the Anheuser-Busch truck was on it’s way back to St. Louis when all of a sudden, a call came in to turn around and go back to Rolla. Yes, the beer truck didn’t even make it an hour away before the town of Rolla ran out of beer. That story actually ran in Playboy. Who ever would have thought us corn-fed, small town college kids would ever be noticed by Playboy?
The parties are epic even to this day. Girls from all around come in. They are known as “imports”. Basically the girls who come with the hopes of meeting a boyfriend or at least getting laid. The ratio of boys to girls in Rolla is fairly high. Five males for every female? Yes, the girls have their pick of the litter. Of course, the imports are always obvious by their slutty attire. A Rolla girl is always more laid-back, choosing to chug the beers alongside the boys instead of standing by the sidelines sipping a flavored cocktail.
Shark attacks were also rampant this time of year. That simply meant a St. Pats rep would randomly, out of nowhere, bite you on the butt as hard as you could imagine. It wasn’t uncommon to see girls guarding one another because another sign of an import was the terrified scream and the beating that came after such an event. The Rolla girls knew better than to ever leave your behind exposed during St. Pat’s without one of your most trusted friends guarding it.
All the fun, all the mayhem ended once I got my degree and left the small college town for bigger and supposedly better things. I always wanted to experience a larger college, feeling as if I had missed out...and I went to graduate school at Clemson University. While I loved it there, it really lacked a certain something that I can’t put my finger on...there really is something magical about a small, tight knit community. Something I have yearned for ever since I left the campus of UMR.
I miss those days more than I ever would have imagined back then. At the time, I thought life was always just one big party after another, and that friends would always be as easy to make as they were in college. I no longer drink, nor do I have the desire too....but something about the spirit, the excitement...all of that was an experience I’d love to re-live once again.
Of course, I have been back. I went back just last year with my now ex-husband. I had high expectations of it being just like old times, experiencing the old traditions, meeting old friends and falling into place as if we never left.
But nothing in life works out the way you plan, huh? People grow apart, traditions get changed and a whole new class of students comes in, leaving very little room for us "old" folk. Sure, there is a certain amount of respect that comes from surviving the mayhem, but you will never again get to experience it the way that it was. Dabbling your feet back into the mucky waters of ALICE will not get you any closer to your youth, it will only taunt you with the memories of things you can no longer experience, experiences that no longer exist to you.
But at the end of the day, everyone grows up and must leave the mischievous fun of youthfulness and drunken sex behind one day. Unless of course, you’re Charlie Sheen, but not many of us are (thankfully so).
Real life comes in, carries you swiftly into adulthood and leaves all of that behind. I am very proud of where I am today,but I still can’t help but cherish the memories. Every St. Patricks Day, I get a little reminiscent and excited to re-live those moments, even if only briefly in my head while sitting in my cubicle, typing away at yet another pricing analysis. It gets me by, but sometimes I wonder if that's enough?
It is true what they say about memories being more valuable than any material object you can buy. Even as I am living the mundane life of an office monkey, barely getting time to breathe much less have a social life. I have my memories which can always bring a smile to my face and a story that I am proud to share (and hopefully will make someone laugh).
And St. Patrick’s Day brings back some of the best memories of my life, and while my 3 year wedding anniversary would fall on the day before St. Pats (not a coincidence, it was St. Patrick’s day themed), I don’t let that cloud the joyous memories of my youth. It also reminds me that while those experiences are in my past, my life is full of opportunities to create new, wondrous memories that I will also cherish just the same way one day.
With a little luck, I might even get to go back there again one day during St. Pat’s without an ex-husband to drag me down. I can drink my green beer, watch the streets get painted green, and relish in all the memories of an amazing life that I have had, and celebrate the wonderful future I still have in store for me.
After all, I am not that old yet!