Scored

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• March 23, 2024

“What the fuck does ‘scoring’ mean?” I ask my sister. It’s St. Patrick’s Day. I’m referring to a text from my mom, instructions on how to make her famous corned beef, which, will be my first attempt at ever making the Irish feast. My mom makes the best corned beef, and everyone who has ever tried it agrees. Mostly, it has to do with the sauce. My Irish friend, Dennis Rooney, took umbrage with the sauce, saying it wasn’t true “poor people Irish food.” I told him, “leave it to the Italians to make an Irish meal far more delicious.” Even though my mom isn’t at all Italian and is Irish.

“I don’t know,” my sister responds. I don’t know why I would ask her any culinary questions. Cooking isn’t one of my sister’s skills. It’s why I’m at her house making all the food.

“Does she mean stabbing? Is this a typo for stabbing?” I would have stabbed the meat anyway, all Michael Myers style. Mom doesn’t answer the phone because she’s in Florida making her own St. Patrick’s Day meal. A simple google search probably would have answered this question, but we didn’t ask the internet.

While the corned beef boils for hours, I drink Guinness for hours and play Irish music. My brother comes over with his son, a couple of my friends, and our cousins and their kids. After the meat boils, I stab it a bunch before glazing it with the secret sauce and putting it in the oven. The secret sauce is simple— a mixture of spicy mustard and dark brown sugar. So many of the best things in life are simple.

It’s too late when my mom texts me what the meaning of scoring is. She sends a picture of her “scored” meat.

“That’s scoring? She should have said ‘make velociraptor like claw marks with a knife’ and I would have known exactly what she meant.”

My meal was a smashing success. So much so, my sibling and cousins deemed St. Patrick’s Day ‘my holiday.’ As long as I could cook at one of their houses, I told them. The kids ran around for hours and laughed and played.

In reality, I should be damning St. Patrick. The man who “drove snakes out of Ireland.” St. Patrick did practically nothing he was known for. Historians now believe St. Patrick just started rumors about himself, building his own reputation and mythology. It is actually most likely he was involved in slave trade of his own people. The Irish side of my Mom’s family were Irish slaves, which my uncle found out through some ancestry digging. But, as far as I see it, don’t let the truth about your history get in the way of an excuse to drink, eat and be merry with your loved ones. I’m not trying to cancel the holiday, even if the saint was is as fake as a leprechaun. After enough time, no one is keeping score.