St. Patrick's Day t-shirt

ahoy ahoy.

As you may or may not know, every year Old Navy puts out a St. Patrick's Day t-shirt.

Here you see the t-shirt they put out this year.

I am not a huge fan of Old Navy, but I am a huge fan of St. Patrick and Old Navy sells these cool t-shirts each year for only $5.00. And so I buy one each year.

So last year, a few days before St. Patrick's Day, was was rockin' my Old Navy St. Patrick's Day t-shirt and I went to get my morning coffee.

There is this girl who worked at the coffee shop that I go to who never once said "hello" or "good morning" or "have a good day" to me. She used to be all chatty Cathy with her young, cool-looking young male friends, but not with me. Maybe he never said anything more than "what can i get for you?" and "that's a dollar, forty-eight" to me because I am old and square and have a real job and am married. I don't really care if she doesn't want to have a conversation with me, but a little common courtesy when I am paying way too much for coffee would be nice. "Hi, how are you today?" or "Take it easy," is all I am asking for. All the other people who work there say hello to and exchange pleasantries with me, but not this girl. She always seemed to have this attitude of "I am young and cool and I am only going to talk to young cool people."

So I have established that with the exception of coffee-related queries, she has never said anything to me at all, ever.

So I go walking into the coffee shop with my St. Patrick's day t-shirt on and she is behind the counter and is chatting with some of the aforementioned young, cool friends. I walk up to the counter and ask for a small coffee. She looks at my shirt and says to me "did you know that St. Patrick was actually Roman and not Irish?"

She says it loud enough for her friends to hear and her tone seemed to me to imply that:

1.) She was telling me something that I obviously didn't know.

2.) I was a mindless drone who thinks St. Patrick's day is a made-up holiday fueled by Guinness and is just an excuse to go out and get loaded.

3.) I was into kitschy, holiday-related crap and I should have also been wearing a button that said "Kiss Me I'm Irish."

I looked up at her and considered telling her that I had fairly recently finished reading the second of 2 biographies of St. Patrick. And that I read those "Lives of Saints" books all good Catholic kids get for First Communion and Confirmation. I also considered telling her that he feared that a sin he committed when he was young was so horrible that he would be sent to Hell. I was going to tell her that he once calmed a pack of hungry, barking dogs that threatened to expose him as a runaway slave. I also thought that it might be appropriate to mention that the reason he was so successful in bringing Christianity to Ireland was because he had found a way to integrate Catholic religious ceremonies with the Pagan traditions without compromising the teachings of Jesus or offending the Pagan priests.

I also considered saying "Yes, I actually did know that." But i decided I wanted her and her friends to know what an idiot I thought she was.

So after she said, "Did you know that St. Patrick was actually Roman and not Irish" I said:

"Yeah, no crap." as if to imply that everyone in the whole wide world knew it and that she wasn't actually teaching me anything.

I know that not everyone knows that he was Roman, but that didn't matter.

She always made me feel like she was doing me some gigantic favor by pouring 12 oz of hot liquid into a cup. And she always made me feel like i should feel priviledged that she took the 30 seconds out of her work day to give me her coffee.

And I always really hated the fact that she was the only person who has ever worked there that never once said anything nice to me, but did not hesitate for a second to say "good morning" and "how are you" to the young college-aged people that came in.

And for that matter, it felt really good to kind of say something that had a "why don't you shut the hell up and give me my freaking coffee" feel to it.

But it is not my place to put someone else down mo matter how they may make me feel, so in retrosepct, I feel bad for having said that to her and subsequently feeling good about saying it.

St. Patrick did not become a saint by putting people down, he became a saint by helping people. Therefore I should have instead prayed for her and asked God to help give me the strength to not mind that this person wasn't nice to me.

After the St. Partick's Day t-shirt incident, she went back to never speaking to me at all and a few months later she quit working there.