Hey, it's St. Patrick's Day!

Throughout my late teen years, I worked my way through college toiling in a pretty nice Italian restaurant doing.....well just about everything actually. There wasn't too much I didn't know how to do there so I could work serving in the dining room or cooking and even sometimes cleaning in the kitchen. Being kind of a "jack of all trades", I got my share of hours and truth be told, it wasn't a bad job at all.

In this restaurant, we had this "cook" (he insisted on being called a "chef" but he was not a "chef" as he did not have the requisite degree so nobody addressed him as "chef") named Dan. Now Dan really had a lot of "issues" but to sum it up, he was basically a very eccentric "mad at the world" curmudgeon. He was only a few years older than me and in his early 20's and really too young for this type of "old man" personality but that was him.

Anyway, he really was at his most obnoxious on St. Patrick's Day because the sight of the rest of us all dressed in green, wearing hats and beads, blowing noisemakers and generally having a good time was not at all pleasing to him.

Every year, he would wear a faded old orange sweater instead of wearing anything green. All throughout the night he would say to whoever was within earshot, "I am not wearing green, you know! Look, I am not wearing green! I am wearing orange! I am Dutch and orange is our national color! I would never wear green on St. Patrick's Day! I am wearing orange! What do you think of that?! How come you are not wearing orange?"

All night we would listen to this. Every once in while someone would say something like, "Ok, we get it. Give it a rest. Where's my lasagna?" but this didn't really stop him. I remember once a waitress brought back a green beer to him to try and cheer him up but the sight of green just got him going again. He truly was at his most miserable on St. Patrick's Day. Poor Dan!

In honor of my "friend", Dan, I grace this site with a picture of the Philadelphia Flyers this St. Patrick's Day. Not an Irishman in the bunch.*

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

*Well I don't know if anybody is or not. They are wearing orange, aren't they?