CULTURAL EVENT #3

South Side St. Patrick’s Day Parade – Complete and Utter Drunken Insanity

So on Sunday we bought tickets on a chartered bus to the South Side of Chicago for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. Apparently this is a common thing, because it’s really difficult to get down to the South Side any other way, and nobody wants to be driving to a giant parade where everyone is drunk. So we show up at an Irish pub at 9:30 in the morning (Kelly, Ivy, her sister Lavender, and me) and proceed to have a drink. We weren’t sure if we were going to get a spot on the bus or not because we didn’t reserve our tickets, but we got the last four seats. There was free beer on the bus:



After about 10 minutes, the bus broke down and we had to get off and stand on the side of the road waiting for another bus. I heard some frat boy remark that he felt like a “refugee.” Yeah, I think we all felt like refugees… it’s a real hard life. We were laughing about that for the rest of the day.



Then we got to the parade, and I drank way too much whiskey. I tripped and fell, and banged up my knee and my forehead. Oh, ouch! The last time I had a drunken falling accident was Steve’s birthday in Madison (Sandy, I’m sure you remember that day well). Anyway it was weird to have one of those days of supreme drunkenness when neither Andrea, Sandy, nor Steve were there.

I saw part of the parade, it was pretty cool. Then we had to eat food so I wouldn’t die, and catch the bus back to the North Side (I slept the whole way). Then we got home and I slowly sobered up. Ryan came over and we spent the evening attempting to watch S.W.A.T. (I fell asleep on the couch, and Ryan fell asleep using my butt as a pillow). I feel like I really exorcised some demons. What a great cultural event.