St Patrick's Day

Posted by John

Today is St Patrick’s Day, a beautiful holiday to celebrate Ireland's most valuable exports: beer, funny accents, and bad decision-making. While old age has tempered my Paddy’s day celebrations of late, there was certainly a time in my life when March 17 was synonymous with making bad decisions. The ultimate of which occurred several years ago when I found myself locked in an epic Irish Car Bomb drinking contest with one of my 50-year-old female coworkers with the entire department standing by bearing witness.

In order to understand how I got to that ridiculous scenario, we’ll need to go back several months to understand the series of bad decisions that preceded such a St Paddy’s Day debacle.

It started one weekday in January when I went with several coworkers to a nearby bar for a late afternoon happy hour to celebrate several of our birthdays that occurred within a few days of one another. Sitting around enjoying a few beers quickly turned ugly when someone started yapping their big mouth (probably me) about how awesome Irish Car Bombs were. First of all, to digress for a moment, for anyone who doesn’t know what an Irish Car Bomb is, it can come in several different forms but the form I’m familiar with is ½ to 3/4 of a pint of Guinness in a glass into which you drop a shot of half Jameson Irish Whiskey and half Baileys Irish Cream then chug it all in one fell swoop. As I said, there are many different versions of the same thing so don’t e-mail me or post comments to my blog about how I’m not doing my Car Bombs correctly or there’s a better recipe or better method or whatever. I get it. I get it. The point is, Irish Car Bomb = Guinness, whiskey, cream, drop, chug, repeat, repeat again, probably once more, try not to vomit, pass out, wake up, spend the whole next morning on the toilet.

Now, some of you might think that the name “Irish Car Bomb” is kind of insensitive to those who were involved in the decade’s long conflict in Northern Ireland until you’ve had several Irish Car Bombs and realize it is actually like having a small car bomb go off in your intestines. In fact, in this chicken and egg scenario I’m pretty sure the Irish Car Bomb drink existed long before the actual act of putting explosives inside a car. A bunch of IRA drunkards were likely sitting around one day, downing shots of whiskey and Baileys in their Guinness when one said to another, “Ya know the day after drinkin’ these things, when yur colon feels like somethin’ detonated inside of it? Ya know that feelin’? It’s too bad we can’t harness that kind of destruction and use it practically to smother those British wankers.”

“Aye, I know what yur sayin’. But how is it possible to put somethin’ so explosive in such a confined space to maximize the damage?”

“Aye! I’ve got it! We just round up a bunch of Brit wankers and shove grenades up their arses! It’s like the same thing!”

“Aye! I like it! I like it a lot… Ahh, but wouldn’t that get a wee bit messy, ya know? I mean, I fur one don’t want to get anywhere near those wanker’s arses.”

“Aye, good point. What to do? What. To. Do…”

Anyway, suffice it to say, an Irish Car Bomb is great going in, as it tastes a bit like a milkshake.

So, getting back to the story. We were sitting around a bar having some beers when some wanker suggested we start doing some car bombs. Never one to learn my lessons, I agreed and pretty quickly there was a car bomb setting in front of me and about four other people, including the aforementioned 50-year-old female coworker. Everyone raised their glass, cheers all around, dropped the shot in, and down the hatch. Now, the thing with a car bomb is, once you drop the shot you have a matter of seconds to drink it down, otherwise the Irish cream will curdle. Don’t believe me? I’ve seen it. I was once at a wanker bar with some friends when one went up to order a round of car bombs. But the wanker barkeep didn’t hand out shot glasses because too many fights occurred after people drank too many shots so instead the bartended just poured the whiskey and cream into the Guinness so by the time the beers made it back to our table the first words out of my mouth were, “Who put cottage cheese in my goddamn Guinness?!?” Disgusting. The other thing about a car bomb is you have to be careful not to tilt your head back to quickly otherwise the shot glass will slide right out and crack your front teeth. Don’t believe me? I’ve seen it happen.

So I distinctly recall drinking my car bomb with a bit of urgency but also somewhat leisurely. When I was about half through I heard the sound of a pint glass slamming down on the table top to my right and the voice of the aforementioned 50-year-old female coworker, “I won! I won! In your face, I won!”

“Whoa. Whoa. Hold on. Whoa. Easy. Hold on now. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Come on. Easy. Whoa. I did not know this was a race. No one said we were racing,” I said.

“I won, I won, I-won-I-won-I-won!” She continued.

“Fine. Whatever. Fine. Fine. Alright. Cool. Whatever. Fine. You won that one,” I said. But you know as well as I do, the last thing I’m going to do is let my mom beat me in an Irish Car Bomb contest, “Now that I know we’re racing, let’s do it again for real,” I suggested. So we did. Another round came out, glasses up, cheers, drop, down the hatch. But the second time around I was dead serious and went after that car bomb like a mongoose to a king cobra. Then just as the last drop was about to slip into my mouth, I heard the distinct sound of a pint glass slamming down on the table top to my right and the voice of the aforementioned 50-year-old female coworker, “I won! I won! In your face, I won!”

What. The. Fuck. I was furious. How on earth did I lose to a 50-year-old woman? Furthermore, how did I lose to a 50-year-old woman in front of all my coworkers? If the humiliation I suffered that day at the bar was bad, it was nothing compared to that which I experienced the next day at work. It was so bad you’d have thought I lost a beard-growing contest to a 6-year-old. Horrible.

But if the first Irish Car Bomb the day before was a bad decision, and the second an even badder decision, what I did next was perhaps the baddest of all. In an effort to redeem some level of dignity, I sent out an e-mail to the aforementioned 50-year-old female coworker and copied the whole damn department, challenging her to a one-on-one Irish Car Bomb drinking rematch to be decided on the biggest Irish Car Bomb drinking day of the year – St. Patrick’s Day.

Bad. Decision.

The logic in my head suggested that given ample time to prepare there was no way I would lose to a 50-year-old woman again, or anyone else for that matter. The reality of real life however, was much different. As it turned out, this was no ordinary 50-year-old woman; this was a bionic beer drinking super hero woman or something. Apparently back when she was in college (they had colleges back then?) she would go down to the local watering hole, challenge dudes to beer drinking contests with pitchers of beer, and win. Pitchers, I tell you! Not only was this a source of free beer for her, she actually made a tremendous amount of money in wagers in this pursuit. And it would seem that age did absolutely nothing to diminish her drinking ability. Dear. God.

I had no choice; I had to train, and train hard. So I did. I would routinely be at home at 10 pm on a weeknight, pour out some Guinness, a shot of Jameson and Bailey’s, glass up, cheers, drop, drink. Do you know what it’s like doing an Irish Car Bomb by yourself before bedtime on a Wednesday night? Aside from one of the top 10 signs of alcoholism, it’s like a Zinedine Zidane head butt to the gut.

The Friday of St Paddy’s Day was upon us before I knew it and the whole office was abuzz with chatter about the impending challenge. Just to make sure everyone knew I was serious about the contest, I went to work that day with a freshly buzzed head down to a number 1, a fresh, new, fat fu Manchu mustache, my aviator sunglasses, and my favorite Guinness t-shirt. If I was going to lose a drinking contest to a 50-year-old woman I was going to do it looking good.

I left work with another guy at noon to head to the bar to do a little pre-gaming and watch some March Madness, which should really be called March Waste of My Time because that’s basically what it is every year. I wasn’t about to jump into some car bombs cold turkey so I needed to get a couple brews in my belly to make sure I was nice and loose. You wouldn’t start a marathon without stretching first, would you?

When 5 o’clock rolled around to say I was nervous would be an understatement. Before I knew it I was standing face-to-face with the aforementioned 50-year-old woman, surrounded by dozens of coworkers, a pint of Guinness in one hand, a shot of whiskey and Irish cream in the other, cheers, drop, gulp, gulp, gulp…

In that moment there was one thing in my head: “If you don’t do this; if you don’t win, you might as well just walk right out that door, pack up all your shit, and move to a new town because you will never live this moment down.”

Gulp, gulp, gulp… I was in the zone. As the last drop crossed the threshold of my lips I slammed the glass down onto the top of the bar and looked up just in time to see her glass hit the bar a split second behind mine. I won. I won! “I won! I won! Holy shit, I won!” The crowd erupted¹.

If the story ended there, it would be awesome. Unfortunately for me, this is not a story about victory; it’s a story about bad decisions, and I made the bad decision to agree to a best of three series. Why wouldn’t I, right? Well, it’s predictable at this point what happened – two car bombs; two losses; and an overall drinking contest loss to a 50-year-old woman. What a humiliating day.

The rest of the night was nothing more than a blur through a haze of beer. The one thing I do remember is, I was asleep before the sun.

What a mess. I’ve only been in one Irish Car Bomb drinking contest since then, but that’s another story for another day. Suffice it to say, that instance was just as bad of a decision as the one described above.

Have a happy, and good-decision-making St. Patrick’s Day.

1. It’s worth noting, I have no idea if the crowd erupted or not; I was pretty sauced at that point.