Bourbon Street with Grandma

Dateline: a subfreezing New Orleans on the morning of the Alabama - Clemson game, Roll Tide. 

My son, who is thirteen, experienced Bourbon Street for the first time yesterday — he hated it. In order, his three biggest complaints were, too many bars, too many drunk people, and too many “inappropriate pictures of women” outside the bars.  In his defense, Bourbon Street with your parents and grandparents is a bit of a buzzkill. 

It does, however, remind me of the time he came home from kindergarten mad because the daughter of an acutal supermodel wouldn’t stop talking to him, touching him, or trying to make him laugh, which, in his words, distracted him from “being the best student he could be.

quaaltagh

(also qualtagh)

Manx English

•  The practice or custom of going in a group from door to door at Christmas or New Year, typically making a request for food or other gifts in the form of a song. Now historical.
   
• The first person to enter a house on New Year's Day; = "first foot". Also: the first person one meets after leaving home, especially on a special occasion.

Origin

Mid 19th century. From Manx quaaltagh, qualtagh the first person one meets after leaving the house, the first person one meets on New Year's Day, lit. ‘someone who meets or is met’ from quaail meeting, also action of meeting + -agh, suffix forming adjectives and also nouns expressing belonging, with insertion of -t-, perhaps by association with an unattested reflex of Early Irish comaltae foster-brother, companion (Irish comhalta)