Being Irish on St. Patrick's Day
Mar. 18th, 2023 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraMake up day at TaxBwana yesterday.
We had this very strange client.
I mean, just very, very strange.
He was heavily masked, and smelled like mold, and collapsed in the chair we provided him as though his legs were disintegrating beneath him, producing from a crease in his rags this one W2 form for $1,000 allegedly earned during 2022, all the while whispering about a job he’d had in 2021 where he’d earned thousands of dollars, but they hadn’t sent him a W2 form. What could he do?
He was Doug Rugg’s client, and I tried to eavesdrop through my own client calculations because, naturally, my mind had begun madly spinning this tale in the style of Bartleby the Scrivener about a man who comes back from the dead to have his taxes done.
It was a kind of ghost story.
Clearly, the firm that hadn’t sent him the W2 was some kind of eeee-vil profit monger, possibly manufacturing mutagens to be dumped in various municipal water supplies. And he had returned from hell to seek vengeance.
Got home and didn’t want to do much of anything.
I’ve been in an awful mood this entire week.
When I’m in an awful mood, I tend to isolate like a sick animal.
But apparently, I had committed myself to accompanying L and Brenda on the Old Ladies’ Version of a Pub Crawl, and they wouldn’t let me back down.
So, we landed up in Mahoney’s—and whattaya know, it was actually kinda fun—three hundred or so people in emerald green swag crammed into an old factory that had been turned into a bar and so, had a big hole in the floor through which we could watch the Irish dancers and the bagpipe/drums corps:
It dawned on me then that all cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender differences might benefit from being treated like being Irish on St. Patrick’s day!
After all, in the bigger scheme of things, cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender differences are insignificant, right?
I mean, the bottom line is that we’re all human. The other things are what you might call cultural flavors on top of that humanity.
So maybe one day a year, we can all be Irish, or Black, or gender-queer, or whatever, and the rest of the time, we can all be just… human.
In the meantime, I may have been the only person at Mahoney’s not wearing green.
Because even on St. Patrick’s Day, I remain Italian and Jewish.
We had this very strange client.
I mean, just very, very strange.
He was heavily masked, and smelled like mold, and collapsed in the chair we provided him as though his legs were disintegrating beneath him, producing from a crease in his rags this one W2 form for $1,000 allegedly earned during 2022, all the while whispering about a job he’d had in 2021 where he’d earned thousands of dollars, but they hadn’t sent him a W2 form. What could he do?
He was Doug Rugg’s client, and I tried to eavesdrop through my own client calculations because, naturally, my mind had begun madly spinning this tale in the style of Bartleby the Scrivener about a man who comes back from the dead to have his taxes done.
It was a kind of ghost story.
Clearly, the firm that hadn’t sent him the W2 was some kind of eeee-vil profit monger, possibly manufacturing mutagens to be dumped in various municipal water supplies. And he had returned from hell to seek vengeance.
Got home and didn’t want to do much of anything.
I’ve been in an awful mood this entire week.
When I’m in an awful mood, I tend to isolate like a sick animal.
But apparently, I had committed myself to accompanying L and Brenda on the Old Ladies’ Version of a Pub Crawl, and they wouldn’t let me back down.
So, we landed up in Mahoney’s—and whattaya know, it was actually kinda fun—three hundred or so people in emerald green swag crammed into an old factory that had been turned into a bar and so, had a big hole in the floor through which we could watch the Irish dancers and the bagpipe/drums corps:
It dawned on me then that all cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender differences might benefit from being treated like being Irish on St. Patrick’s day!
After all, in the bigger scheme of things, cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender differences are insignificant, right?
I mean, the bottom line is that we’re all human. The other things are what you might call cultural flavors on top of that humanity.
So maybe one day a year, we can all be Irish, or Black, or gender-queer, or whatever, and the rest of the time, we can all be just… human.
In the meantime, I may have been the only person at Mahoney’s not wearing green.
Because even on St. Patrick’s Day, I remain Italian and Jewish.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-19 07:56 am (UTC)And that story is just crying out to be written!
no subject
Date: 2023-03-19 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-21 12:15 pm (UTC)