Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, but this year I have learned my lesson. As much as I love to celebrate my Irish heritage, it’s simply too dangerous for me to do so, thanks to a stubborn psychological tic of mine.
My problem is whenever I hear someone crooning the hilariously morose ballad “Danny Boy,” as happens every fifteen minutes or so in an Irish bar on St. Patrick’s Day, I break into giggles. I can usually keep them under control for the first verse or so, but the lines “And if you come, when all the flowers are dying /And I am dead, as dead I well may be” never fail to leave me helpless with laughter.
It’s around this point that I generally get the question “What’s so fucking funny?” After the fourth or fifth rendition, my excuse that the singing is so soulful it reminds me of a clever limerick my Pappy once taught me begins to wear thin.
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