Memories of St. Patrick's Day

When I was a kid, I believed in leprechauns. Perhaps not seriously, but I think I liked to keep my mind open to the possibility. With a middle name like Patrick, I kind of had to.

Every St. Patrick's Day as a young child saw me creating an elaborate, or so I thought at the time, leprechaun trap. These traps usually involved some sort of treat placed underneath a box or a pillow that was propped up with a small stick, pencil, or other collapse-prone object. At night, just before the dawn of St. Patrick's Day morning, a leprechaun was sure to trap himself.

Then, as legend told it, he would have to give me gold.

Every morning I would rush out of bed to check my leprechaun trap. The trap was always sprung, and often there was a tuft of green fuzz to indicate that the hair of the little magic man had been snared! "You almost got him!" my parents would beam. The escaping leprechaun would always leave some candy or gold coins (plastic, as I later determined) in his wake.

One year, the last year I held out any hope for believing in those mischievous creatures, I created a trap of immense nine-year-old cunning. I arranged model cars facing the usual box-and-pencil trap, assuming that the leprechaun would drive the car into the trap. How would the leprechaun drive an inanimate piece of plastic? I assumed some sort of magic, of course!

This was the year I found out that the green hair was hair clipped from one of those hideous troll dolls, and I was saddened by the ice-cold realization that St. Patrick's Day was a sham - there were no leprechauns!

Years later, upon reaching the age to legally consume green beer, the March 17th holiday regained its magnificence. Nowadays I wear green, take pride in my middle name, and drink an Irish beer.