My Crimson Hexagon

Today is St. Patrick's day, when Irish people commemorate the day that St. Patrick got rid of all of the snakes that were plaguing the country by wearing lots of green and getting incredibly drunk as early as possible. I have some friends in Ireland. They tell me St. Patrick's day is not very pleasant in Dublin. My friend Niamh says "St. Patrick's Day is bloody knackers day out." A knacker is kind of a cross between a drunken fratboy and a violent soccer fan. I saw lots of them when I was visiting Niamh in Dublin, actually. Any given weekend resembles downtown Chicago when the Bulls won their "3-peat" - Very drunk assholes spitting and vomiting all over themselves, roughing up their girlfriends, beating the shit out of each other, setting garbage on fire... And there is plenty of garbage all over the streets, mostly junk food containers and beer cans and water bottles. And I mean every weekend. St. Patrick's day must be pretty amazing to behold.
I have a four-leaf clover. It was a gift from one of my old flames many moons ago. I keep it in a really nice hard bound copy of "The Hobbit." I forget what is significant about four-leaf clovers. Do I get to have a wish, or is it just good luck? Maybe I should write to the Lucky Charms cereal manufacturer. They seem to think that red balloons and rainbows are lucky. I never knew that. Does a whoopy cushion count as a ballon? Most of them are red. Maybe they mean only marshmallow balloons are lucky.
Anyway, if a four-leaf clover is supposed to give me a wish I used it up a long, long time ago, many times over, and it sure as hell didn't come true.
I once read a story about a boy who idly wishes on a unicorn horn that everything his parents are gossiping about downstairs while he is drifting off to sleep would become the literal truth. The whole town gets pretty confusing the next day- for instance, one woman called "Minerva" ends up with a tongue that is literally hinged in the middle and flaps on both sides. Every time she says something, a wierd, other-worldly voice chimes in with a cynical follow up.
So there's this redneck guy in the town who apparently annoys the boy's parents by always saying things like "Golly, ah shore wish ah had me some bacon right about now" or "Boy, ah wish it weren't so darn hot" or "Ah wish m'daddy'd give me some cows." The boy's parents say something like "If wishes were horses..." So the redneck ends up getting a whole bunch of horses that run wild all over the town until he eventually gets them into a corrall and decides to sell them and stop saying "I wish" this and that all the time.