What it truly means to have the ‘luck of the Irish’

My friend Esperanza insists that I am the luckiest person she has ever met.  

I’m not sure why or to what she attributes all my so-called luck but whenever I see her she inevitably says, “Ah, si Elaine, you are the luckiest person in the world.”  She is Cuban and likes to qualify everything with a positive.  

I am Irish and therefore usually think, “potato famine” any time someone mentions the “luck of the Irish.”  

I’ve been cheated on, burned by a few “you can’t lose” investments, and nearly had my two front teeth knocked out by my own daughter with her ice skates.   

I lost a home in a messy divorce, took on an insolvent business, and have adult acne.  My cup runneth over and I would like it to stop, please. 

One year I was stalked for several months by my former husband’s girlfriend who according to detectives, wanted to be like me or thought she was me, but me, without the weight.  

Had she been willing to pick up my kids from school on occasion it might have worked but instead she would just stand outside my house watching us or would call during the middle of the night for a chat.   

Apparently, Sean Connery (Scots are nice people too!) was too busy to stalk me, so lucky me, I got her instead.

Not everyone gets thrown out of private school at age forty-four but I did.  

Too bad I didn’t realize until it was too late that private school headmistresses aren’t actually interested in what one thinks about the middle school curriculum.  

It’s a little hard to explain to two little girls that well, mommy got suspended.  

As in relationships, I prefer to say that I was “let go.”

This would probably be a good time to digress for a moment and acknowledge another classic Irish trait which is our stubbornness and cut-off-our-nose-to-spite our-face approach to life which is why I didn’t apologize to the headmistress.  

Later, at our new school, I kept my head down, wrote donation checks and when the girls left to attend university, I was told that we were one of the nicest families.  I didn’t believe it either.

The other headmistress?  Oh, she retired after a long career of academic failures and paid-for-trips with school funds.   

She’s Irish too so I hope that she has a severe case of guilt and at the very least, a growth the size of a watermelon on the side of her head.  

Did I mention that we tend to hang on to our grudges?

Because I am Irish I will give you the shirt off my back but I probably won’t share my dessert.  

Dessert should really be the main course at every meal in an Irish home since what precedes it is pretty horrifying.  

For many of us, dessert is the reward for enduring a home cooked meal.   

Anyone bent on “sharesies” probably isn’t Irish. Want to start a real donnybrook? 

Try helping yourself to my dessert.

Because I am Irish, it will probably take me a little longer to tell a story.  

I will want to give you the background, the players, possibly the weather, who saw whom and anyone that might have the remotest connection in any way to my story.  

In the grand tradition of all that is Irish, I will interrupt myself several times thus prolonging your torture. “You remember your Uncle John, well his wife’s first cousin, on her mother’s side, was a neighbour of Margaret O’Mallys, who married your godfather’s brother,” was a typical prelude to any story told by my mother.  

Why tell a short story when one thrice as long will do fine.  

We also all sort of lookalike too.  While many nationalities might bristle at this generalization we don’t mind at all.  

I’ve had a life time of being told that I look like someone’s daughter, niece, cousin, mother, aunt and soon, someone with a lot of cheek will tell me that I look just like their grandmother.  

This will be regrettable as I will respond with a riposte of such wit, such guile that they will have no choice but to notice that in fact, I do have a passing resemblance to Elle Macpherson who by the way, with her great good looks must be Irish!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and do be safe!