Ashamed and Irish continued (still more to come) possibly PG

Thanks for posting on last version! I am concidering renameing it "proud to be an american." Critiques welcome. (yes snionk i used spell check agian) it still is not done. I am not sure if I rated it properly.

“Ashamed and Irish” or “Proud to be an American”

Dedicated to the McDonough clan including (but not limited to): Granda, and Uncle Jed, but most especially Uncle Sean. May you win all of your pub fights.

Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean McMurphy had a very long name. Why am I bothering telling you this? You can see for yourself. Anyway Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean McMurphy was the son of Irish immigrants who liked many names almost enough to have many children but not quite. So in America (which was not nearly so good as was advertised) they had a many named son.

Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean McMurphy had a normal enough childhood but for the fact that no one called him by his first name or a nickname for that matter. Even his initials MSPOSM were too long for the young boy. So a few times he introduced himself simply as Micheal or even Mike, but his parents would have none of that. His thick red faced father would cuff the back of his head and say, "That there is yor heritage boy! Don't you go around shortening it! Be proud! Be a man!" his father always added "be a man" to any lecture or motivational speech he gave Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean McMurphy, he had got it from American sitcoms. And his mother would always say, "listen to your father dear" just like sitcom mothers. The point is he introduced himself as Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean McMurphy and got called that. It was a wonder anyone could remember the whole thing.

It also posed a problem at school. It was a rather long name to write. For spelling tests his teacher always skipped straight to the spelling so he never had enough time to get all the words. Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean McMurphy loathed his name and vowed to have it changed when he grew up. He had the nagging suspicion that his father named him while drunk and was resentful of it so decided he would rename himself something like Ling, Ching or Chang. Something one syllable and completely not Irish.

Perhaps because of his long name that never seemed to fit for being to long. Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean McMurphy soon grew to accommodated his name by 10Th grade he was 6 foot by 11Th he was 6ft 3... and a half. He would have liked it if it were not for his flaming red hair, freckle covered face, shoulders, arms (he even had a dark blue freckle in one of his blue eyes) and pale pasty complexion. The effect was that he looked like one tall lanky strip of salami. Imagine looking like salami-it was mortifying. Many times he had tried to get a tan but got sunburned instead.

Other than that his adolescence was perfectly normal.

Unless you consider his parents encouraging his underage consumption of beer not normal. Not getting drunk but just the drinking of beer. He had inherited a taste for it too. When he was younger after parties he would run around the house drinking up the dregs out of beer bottles (which there were plenty of, his parents had many fellow Irish friends) then he realized it was unsanitary. Michael (you may have noticed I am using only his very first name, frankly Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean is a hassle to type over and over agian) started a collection of bottle caps when he was 5. By his tenth year he had enough to string over his door like a curtain. He father was very proud. For his 17th birthday his parents got him a fake ID. Yet he did not get truly drunk until the first time in his twenties.

When Micheal was 18 he went to join the army until he could think of anything better to do. Nothing much happened during the three years he spent there besides getting caught a few times for having a fake ID. Also he did something that most people would say he is going to hell for. Most people would be interested in it anyway that so I will tell you.

One day Micheal was broke, hungry and sick of army sludge. So he went to his friend Jacob and invited him to lunch. “OK, but I don’t have any money, Micheal Seamus Patrick O'flannigan Sean, so you have to pay.” Jacob told his friend.

“Don‘t worry, I will take care of it” said Micheal.

On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant there was a bum. “Would you like to go to lunch with us?” Micheal asked. Naturally the bum eagerly agreed. So off to lunch the three of them went.

In the restaurant the dirty bum, who was given even dirtier looks by the waitress, was hesitant to take too much advantage of Michael’s generosity but Micheal assured him he could get whatever he wanted. The bum being reassured enthusiastically ordered much food for himself. After giving Micheal a questioning look to which Micheal just shrugged Jacob also ordered. After a while there food came and they ate. Pretty soon both Micheal and Jacob were done. “We will go pay the bill” Micheal told the bum who was still slurping a soda.

“Oh thank you so much for this meal gov’na. I will pay you back some time I swear! I’ve just been a little down on my luck lately. Any day now I will make a fortune. Any day…” bums are usually ‘down there luck lately’ but lately for them seems to last a very long time. Also the bum did not say “gov’na” but I just could not resist.

“Don’t worry about it” Micheal told him. Micheal lead Jacob over to the waitress and said, while pointing at the bum, “he is paying for our meal” the bum looked up and smiled. Micheal smiled and waved back. Jacob and Micheal hightailed it out of the restaurant. Jacob, although he loved the food, never went there again.