(From last Sunday’s Times and News Star, 3-11)

If you are with another person and you two find yourselves at Lowe’s on a Saturday morning, looking at the commode lid displays and having a very candid conversation about the plusses and minuses of each one, as if you were scouting a potential Knicks prospect and trying with passion to make a decision that will be best for the team long-term, you are very likely married.

Very married.

Drafting a commode seat is not first-date material. It’s probably not even first decade material. If you and your mate are picking out a new commode seat — and that was the specific mission of the trip, which was even discussed in depth and planned earlier in the week — you are the “m” in married.

You DEFINE marriage.

For couples who have reached that level, who look at such a trip almost as a date — “Hey, let’s get some plumber’s tape while we’re here!” “Great idea, honey! — divorce is unlikely.

Unless you picked out a bad commode seat.

But say it’s a good commode seat, even grand, the Golden State Warriors of toilet seats — who would get that in the divorce? See, it’s just not worth it. Might as well stay married. Maybe one day — let’s say to celebrate a Silver Anniversary — you two could even buy a whole commode. New!, (not used; never do that. Tacky.)

(On the other hand, if you have to go to Lowe’s on a fall football Saturday, you are more than married. You are an indentured servant.)

I lived this Toilet Seat Drama a couple of weeks ago. Remember last Saturday, the first pretty day in so long, a clear and mild day after a month of record rain? And a weekend day too! The world was our oyster.

We went to the cleaners. To the grocery store. To this place and that place. Ate a sandwich on a restaurant patio. We never do all that.

And everyone we saw was just so happy to be outside, without a raincoat on. No yard work, even though we all needed to do it, because this was the first pretty day to have that option but it was also the first pretty day in a long time and a good opportunity to do nothing.

This was the dream I was living when we ended up in front of the toilet seat display. It’s really not a display though. That would be like calling the Grand Canyon a fairly large ditch.

Toilet seat displays at home improvement stores are like shrines. Shrines to the family thrones. They are all up on this wall, so you can lift the lid and look and it feels like the hole in the seat is looking back at you.

There are plastic ones and ceramic ones (plastic won’t get as cold but ceramic is more sturdy), circles and ovals, and ones that have a sort of self-closing seat; it goes halfway down and then slows itself so it can’t wake up anybody when you let the lid drop accidentally during one of those five times you get up to go to the bathroom each night.

So we stood there and looked up and down that wall. Studied. Imagined. Even appreciated. You see the same posture in people who visit art museums and just stand there in front of the “Mona Lisa” or “The Creation of Adam” or “David,” hands clasped behind them, admiring in wonder.

The closest thing I can compare it to in my experience is buying a car.

It’s a decision you can’t rush into. After all, you’ll be spending a lot of time together.

Just like you do with your spouse. Make sure your fit is sturdy and strong, and warm.

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(Actually instead of DW Teddy Allen, today’s effort is by Special O’Designated O’Contributor O’Teddy Aiden Dylan Conor McGrath O’Sullivan O’Allen O’Jr. O’Jr.)

Things come in threes, they say.

Shots from beyond the arc. Strikes from a pitcher. Deaths of celebrities.

But only in rare cases do we get such a rich week of A Special Three Days as we are concluding now.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! It comes on the heels of Pi Day Wednesday, Ides of March Thursday, and today, St. Patrick’s Day Saturday.

Friday, March 16, was interestingly enough the fifth wheel out in a four-day span. March 16 is a day still looking for a purpose. March 16 can hold on to this: at least you were a Friday. We’ll take that.Thank you!

You, the loyal Designated Writer Reader, might wonder: Why do we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? You might even wonder why we HAVE St. Patrick’s Day since the last thing you’re going to do is celebrate it: crap, you have grass to mow or baseball practice to go to. “And if anybody pinches me because I don’t have on green, I’m going to…”

For one thing—and even I, who am as Irish as a shamrock, had a hard time grasping this—although this is St. Patrick’s Day, even the Irish call it St. Paddy’s Day for short, subbing the d’s for the t’s. Why? From drinking too much green beer, that’s why. It’s the natural slur of things…

If you’re an English teacher who is not Irish, sorry, you don’t get to call the shots here. The Irish rule of thumb (we will explain “rule of thumb” in a in a future Daily Happen because we have only 300 words here, and we’re dealing with a lot of days) is that it’s St. Paddy’s Day. St. Patty’s Day celebrates St. Hamburger, and you can celebrate that anytime you want. I celebrated it this week on Monday, Tuesday and Friday.

Sickeningly, we’ve run out of room and can’t explain Right Now why we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. We will next year. In the meantime, if anyone threatens to pinch you today, just tell them you have on green underwear, that your middle name is O’Leary, and to leave you O’lone.

Have a fun Saturday!, Irish or not.

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