St. Patrick’s Day in Chapel Hill is a raucous evening out.

I was on a business trip alone, hoping to find something quiet and exotic for dinner.

I walked past two different men dressed as leprechauns, both of whom seemed much more grim than that little guy who hawks breakfast cereal on TV. I wondered if perhaps their outfits were the consequences of lost bets. They didn’t seem open to any of the jokes that came to mind, so I held my tongue.

The Irish pub on the corner had a white tent set up in the alley. Inside, patrons wore green shamrock beads and a pair of musicians played fiddle tunes while two preteen girls Riverdanced with their arms welded to their sides.

It was crowded. It was loud. It was smoky. And, since I don’t eat meat, the only thing on the menu I could eat was Welsh rarebit, which I remembered gave Gomer Pyle nightmares. I looked around at the rowdy crowd and decided that holiday or not, I needed to celebrate more sedately.

In the next block I found what I was looking for: a Vietnamese restaurant called Lime and Basil. You can’t get much greener than that.

Inside there were only about eight tables. Soft music played, and an intelligent college-town crowd said smart things like, “I enjoy the work. I just don’t understand the nomenclature.”

I ordered jasmine tea that smelled like flowers every time I took a sip. My dinner was lemongrass stir-fried with tofu and jasmine rice. When the young waitress left the plate on the table and softly encouraged me to “Enjoy!” I waved the steam toward me just to drink in the aromas. If I had been yanked from my chair by the Rapture at that point, those heavenly smells might well have been enough.

I ate too quickly for the waitress, who frowned at me sternly and said as much. She was right. I had wolfed almost all of it down because it was such a delicious combination of delicate flavors.

And I was distracted by the woman who didn’t understand the nomenclature, who was describing how her traveling companions miscalculated the value of the Euro and overpaid for a pizza in Florence.

You don’t find ambience like that on St. Patrick’s Day just anywhere.

My dinner cost $13.00 with tip, and I had a little to carry back to the hotel for a cold snack later. Most dinner entrees at Lime and Basil were less than $10.

There were plenty of vegetarian and vegan choices on the menu, giving it five carrots on the Veg-o-Menu scale.

Thomas the turkey broke his wing.

I found him on his back, stunned and not able to turn over. He was holding his head at a funny angle, and my first thought was that he might have broken his neck.

I helped him roll over, and he stood right up, but his wing was hanging oddly.

I’d seen him earlier, standing on top of the water heaters that have been waiting on the porch to be installed now for a year. (I had enough money from the tax refund to buy them but not to install them. Then when we had money, the plumber had a waiting list we never got on. This spring I said I’d either get them installed or bake them a birthday cake.) We’d been storing the 50-pound bags of sweet feed and laying pellets on top of the boxes to keep the chickens and turkeys out of them. Thomas had never jumped up that high before.

The boxes are at least three feet tall and the porch is about that high off the ground, so Thomas fell six feet and landed on his wing. Since he weighs about as much as those bags of feed, that was lots of impact on those little bones.

All the vets’ ads in the phone book said they were closed, but I called their offices anyway. Most referred me to the emergency vet in Chesapeake. I’d called them about goats before, and they seemed clueless about farm animals. Finally one vet’s answering machine referred me to a pager number, and they returned my call to say they were still open and could work us in.

“How did he break his wing?” the woman at the vet’s office asked.

“I’m pretty sure he fell off of the porch,” I told her.

“How could just falling from a porch break his wing?” she asked.

I had images of myself being led away in handcuffs, screaming “I didn’t do it! I never pushed him!”

I thought of how clumsy the turkey was, how we threw food out into the yard just to watch him galumph over like an ostrich with one short leg, how we laughed at the way he fell over when he got into scuffles with the roosters over those laying pellets. Maybe this woman wasn’t too familiar with domestic turkeys.

We loaded the turkey into a pet carrier. He’s so big that we had to take the crate apart and reassemble it around him. It took both my husband and me an “oof” and bent knees to lift him into the back of the Jeep.

At the vet’s office, a bird in a cage grabbed a strand of my hair through its cage, but wouldn’t speak. A little fluffy dog on a retractable leash trotted over to a giant chocolate lab lying in the floor with its head resting on its double-jointed paws. The lab lifted its head, which was bigger than the fluffy dog, and scared it back into its owner’s lap. The office dogs lorded over the tethered ones that they were naked and leashless and dove after the treats the office workers tossed to the yappier patients waiting to be seen.

It was easy to spot my accuser among the office staff. She was older than the other perky young women in smocks with kittens on them. She barked short commands to the worker she was training, and snatched a file folder from the hapless woman’s hands, flipped it over and sighed heavily, as though preventing her trainee from labeling it incorrectly wore her completely out.

As I filled out forms for Thomas, she nearly spit at the new employee as she corrected every keystroke the young woman entered.

I felt great sympathy for the trainee, and smiled at her with my eyes wide when the older woman turned her back, hoping to convey a silent “hang in there.” She didn’t notice and kept her mouth tight as she tried to create the turkey’s new patient file. The drill sergeant grabbed the stapler out of her hands to show her the RIGHT way to attach a form to the inside of the file.

I imagined high-fiving the trainee as she entered the paddy wagon with me, watching through the back doors as the paramedics wheeled the older woman’s sheet-draped body away. I would have testified on her behalf.

The vet said that Thomas had arthritis. And gout. She wrapped tape around his wing and taped his wing tight to his body and said he needed to keep that on for about a month. Seventeen dollars on the credit card, and we were done.

Thomas is kept in a pen now and is back to his old ways, stealing feed from the rabbit that shares his pen and gobbling at us when he thinks we should feed him again.

I haven’t seen any news items about a veterinary assistant going postal, but I expect it any day.

I think too much.

This occurred to me as I scanned radio stations in the car the other day. I stopped on “Flashdance” and the line “and she’s dancing like she’s never danced before” gave me pause. So, she’s dancing as though she’s completely without experience? She’s that bad?

I’d just perused an entire rack of greeting cards and had thought twice about one that cursed the recipient with “No one will ever love you more than I do.” Yikes! You know this? This is the best I’ll ever have it? How creepy.

It happened again when I went to the car dealership. “You’ll never get a better bargain” sounds more as though the salesman is casting a hex on me than promising me a good value.

Maybe I’m expecting a level of sincerity that just doesn’t exist. When I followed a coffin manufacturer’s tractor trailer down the interstate, I didn’t quite buy the company’s concern for my welfare when I saw “Please drive safely” painted across the back in a sarcastic font.

That led me to wonder how many other things we say sound nice on the surface, but are really veiled insults.

Suppose you run in to a friend you haven’t seen for a long time, and she gushes, “You’ve never looked better!” Is that a good thing?

Then a cartoon devil appeared on my shoulder and said, “You know, a person could have fun with this.”

“Oh, pshaw,” I told her. I rolled down the car window and let the wind suck her out.

“I’ve never seen you behave so ethically!” she wailed as she flew away.

But I’m weak. I gave in.

I’m generally a polite person. I never say rude things to people when they’re actually present. I save the barbed quips for my retelling of the story later.

Then again, I grind my teeth and get monster migraines. Maybe saying things that sound polite but really express how I feel will let me blow off a little steam without offending anyone.

When the teenager behind the counter at the deli finally stopped twirling her hair and took my order, I smiled brightly and said, “I’ve never had better service here.”

She narrowed her eyes and thought a minute, but that seemed to hurt, so she stopped and said, “Um . . . you’re welcome?”

I think all of us women who were raised to keep our knees together when we sit and to smile and be gracious could make great use of this technique. There are so many practical applications.

When overlooked for promotion, a person could tell the boss, “I’ve never seen you make a wiser decision.”

When a condescending coworker brags about his accomplishments, you could say, “You’ve never seemed more capable.”

And when I use one of these on you, feel free to tell me, “You’ve never been so polite.”

I can’t tell you how happy you’ll make me.