This is an important pre-St. Patrick’s Day Public Service Announcement for new elementary school parents. If you have a child in kindergarten or first grade, listen up. Preschool parents, you may want to tune in, too…it may be spreading to younger kids.
Here’s the situation. Somewhere in the past decade a crazy new trend was hatched. Parents are willingly encouraging leprechauns to come into their homes and wreck stuff. Knick-knacks get turned upside down. Mustaches are drawn on pictures. Glitter shamrocks are scattered over the floor with reckless abandon. What we can only assume is green leprechaun pee appears in the toilets. I’ve even heard rumors of turnips being placed in shoes.
It seems to have all started with the idea of building traps for the little green buggers. That sounds like a nice creative STEM-oriented school activity, right? But wait, hold onto your Lucky Charms, because in March 2010, the dark crafty netherworld known as Pinterest was born. From that point, I can only hypothesize that some grown-up out there — we’ll call them Parent Zero– was really missing their Elf on a Shelf and simply couldn’t wait for the Easter Bunny. After too much Bailey’s-spiked espresso, inspiration struck and they started the first “board” of leprechaun tricks. People started pinning it, and liking it, and sharing it and–BOOM–a new magical tradition was spawned. I imagine at that moment, somewhere deep within the Magical Rainbow Forest where Holiday Creatures spend their off-seasons, Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy collectively said “What the WHAT?!?”
No, you only learn about it when your kindergartner or first-grader comes home from school — wearing the cute green outfit that you THOUGHT was all that was required for St. Patrick’s Day — sobbing because yours was “the only house that the leprechaun didn’t visit,” followed by wondering if it’s maybe because they “just need to believe harder.” Then, your jaded heart breaks and you enlist magical grandparent helpers to unleash enchanted green fury on your house while you and the kids ‘run an errand’ that evening.
I took a poll of my Facebook friends — truly sound research — and I found that while more people seem to hate the Little Green Pain in the Shamrocks (LGPitS) than love him, a lot of us still let him in. There was also a distinct trend of parents who were likewise blindsided by this new “tradition” when their kids hit elementary school.
So, please be warned. Whether you choose to invite LGPitS into your home or not this year, your kids will likely come home from school with tales of awesome shenanigans that happened at their friends’ houses. But the good news is, St Paddy’s is on Saturday this year, so you’ve got all weekend to get your magic on — or come up with a great excuse as to why no leprechauns visited your house.
And one more thing –while we’re all here together — today is March 14 — Pie Day (as in 3.14). So, how do we all feel about a Pie Fairy? Now that I can get behind wholeheartedly.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
