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Saturday, March 17, 2007

It's St. Patrick's Day every day in Stockholm

Most of us run around with a great deal of incorrect information sloshing around in our memories. That's why it's so wonderful when a private company makes an effort to correct common misconceptions. For example, I'm betting that most our dear readers have heard of the famous explorer, Marco Polo. You probably learned--you may even have read--that Marco Polo grew up in and, in his travels, acted as a representative of, Venezia (Venice). That would mean, obviously, that Mr. Polo was a Venetian. But we've been deceived!

Now, as we all know, everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. Well, Irish enough to drink green beer and dress up as leprechauns. Which is Irish enough for pretty much everyone except the Irish themselves, so it pretty much works out.

In researching this whole Marco-Polo-wasn't-Venetian thesis, I searched the internet for rules regarding the rule about everyone being Irish on St. Patrick's Day, and the most unexpected thing I learned is that

"even leprechauns need colonoscopies."
Good to know. Well, good to know if you're a leprechaun with a family history of colon cancer. Which puts most of us squarely in the didn't-need-to-know-that category.

Since I couldn't find any exceptions, I am forced to conclude that Marco Polo was indeed Irish on at least one day per year. Whether he made mention of it--or indeed, whether he knew it at all--is beside the point. What's not beside the point is that we all know that you can't start a whole line of clothing stores working only one day per year on it. Ergo, Marco Polo was, in fact, Marc O'Polo.

Aye know yer tinkin' dat Aye'm Venetian, but really Aye'm eye-rrish--'n' so arr me clothes.

I've got a big, fat O-apostrophe to give first person who can prove that, in one of those grand, Christopher-Columbus-style miscalculations which seem to turn up in history all too often, Mr. Polo ended up Ireland, but simply reported that he had been to China. Who wants to be the very first O'al-Mubarak or O'Rousseau or O'Goldstein?

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