Being the type of mother that likes to torture her son on a regular basis, I decided to drag him down to the St. Patrick's Day parade on Saturday. My son is 12, and his idea of a perfect Saturday is alternating between playing XBox and downloading music. But I hadn't been to the parade yet and I believe that parents still get to be program director. Crazy idea, I know.

So we hopped on the 145 bus. Since we were a little early we hopped off at Illinois and headed south on Michigan. We glanced over the bridge at the lime green water, and he reminded me of the time 3 years ago when I'd dragged him to see the river being dyed. He took one look and said "yep, it's green. Let's go home." Sigh.

We kept to the west side of Michigan Avenue. One look across the street at the throngs of slowly moving people and I knew I wanted to keep that broad street between us. Especially since, being the unofficial St. Patrick's Day and all, several of the crowd were having a hard time walking a straight line. Plus we weren't wearing green and I didn't relish the idea of being pinched by a complete stranger. At least not at 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning.