Lucky Charms and Leprechauns: Will We Ever Find Out What's At The End of the Rainbow??

Today has me wondering about my storied history with leprechauns.

Thats right. I just said 'storied'. I'm serious about this leprechaun business.

Where to start? Okay, how about the summer of 1989? Little Rainey is six years old, taking an art class. Her impressionable little mind has the Lucky Charms theme song running on a repeat loop. "Hearts, stars and rainbows! Clovers and balloons!" The red balloon has just been added to the roster of her favorite cereal (who are we kidding, her favorite marshmallows), and she scribbles out a crude picture of little Lucky the leprechaun with a pot of his famed charms. Marketing companies everywhere rejoiced in the success of the updated cereal jingle.

From what I recall, I was quite obsessed with finding this pot of...well...basically randomness. Those were back in the days where my silly little mind was happy with the concept of a large pot of colorful, pleasantly shaped objects guarded by a miniature man in a green suit. Now I say, "Hearts stars and rainbows?" No way. Gimmie the cash and jewels. And the little man? Probably a pedophile. Unfortunately the passage of time has made me greedy and pessimistic.

Anyways, back to unimpressionable little me. I would fervently seek the skies for rainbows during recess. When I did happen to spot one, I would run full tilt until I ran out of playground space. Foiled by the elementary school fence time and time again!

What I really wanted to find was this:



Back in reality what I actually found was some patchy grass at the end of a sad soccer field next to a highway. So, I didn't think about the leprechaun much until I moved to Dublin for a semester in college.

During my time in Dublin, I drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of cheese, and kissed a lot of Irish boys. I dated one particular Irish boy named Eoghan for a portion of my time there, and no one was more shocked than I when he told me that he had leprechauns living in his backyard.

Eoghan: "The older people in the family told us not to go in the backyard as children because the leprechauns would come and get us."
Me (spit-taking some Smithwicks): Whaaat?! Buwhahahahahaha!!!!

Someone my age still believed in leprechauns?! For reals? It seemed so far fetched and ridiculous to me that it's one of the few things I still remember of Dublin despite my self-induced 3 month long Smithwicks-and-Irish-cheddar haze.

In all reality, I don't think of leprechauns often. All of these memories didn't come rushing to me until today when I went to Subway with a co-worker. As we stood in line, my co-worker pointed out a very tiny man in a green-ish tinted suit and mouthed 'elves' to me.

I wonder what we would have found if we followed him?

Meh, probably just a restraining order.