Pot of bold.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
Why, Parkdale has them all!

Recently I had the pleasure, and courage, to stroll through Parkdale late at night. And to my great delight, I saw a midget!

Being part Irish, we folks from the Emerald Isle consider the sighting of a Leprechaun just prior to St. Patrick's Day a good tiding. Leprechauns are as important to the Irish, and our celebration, as the albino groundhog is to the Wiratonian and Punxsutawnian.

I hope folks have no ill will for me as a result of my using the word 'midget'; then drawing a straight line from midget to leprechaun. If it looks like an orange, and smells like an orange, and tastes like an orange, it's likely an orange, right?
I think that the onus is on YOU, the reader, to accept that midgets and leprechauns exists, and are sometimes one and the same.

And anyway, the story hasn't nearly reached its offensive potential.

A local watering hole in Parkdale, The Dufferin Gate (known familiarly as "The Gate"), set the stage for this little drama to be played out. At nearly midnight I observed what looked like an infant with rickets hobble out of 'The Gate' and towards a tiny bike. Seconds later a drunk blonde and her escort fell through "The Gate" entrance and dove at the Leprechaun as he tried to mount his bike.
I listened carefully to see if, in the spirit of tradition, the Leprechaun revealed the location of his pot of gold.
The dizzy blonde had something other than gold coins on her mind--she wanted to say something to him:

A- (unlocking his bike)
B- (grabbing Leprechaun) "Hey!"
A- (balls himself up as if to protect vital organs and roll away)
B- "I've never seen a little person in real life before! Only on teevee!"
A- (clearly flattered by the attention) "Oh. (inaudible)"

The boyfriend now asked his burning question.

C- "Can you double me on your handlebars?"

To his question, the bow-legged Leprechaun sat on his wee bike in silence. I left the scene quickly, not wanting to see something that would pull at my heart-strings and give me guilt-ridden pause at my keyboard when I tried to record the goings-on.

Also, I hated to look at two people who caught a Leprechaun and blew their chance at riches with stupid queries and questions.