The rashers on the little boy's plate were contaminated by runny egg with red dust on it. He'd been looking forward to the Bailey's breakfast in Dublin Castle for weeks, but one small leakage could ruin the whole day. His eyes filled up. He was supposed to judge the St Patrick's Day parade: how could he do it properly if his tummy was rumbling?
He knew he was a lucky boy. For years, his parents had clung to their own parents' shoulders, and then been moved off as younger siblings arrived. Watching the parade used to be a form of national medicine - you came, you got wet, you went away and were all the more Irish for the suffering. The balloons always burst before you got home.
By the time he arrived in the nightclub where the judging was to happen, the boy was having a great time. The runny rogue eggs had been pounced on by a psychic waitress, the parade had been great, and now he was going to be able to tell his pals he'd gone to a club with a full-size snooker table in it - and was allowed to play.
As the boy's mammy, I got to be one of the judges too, along with Martina and Robbie Fox's family, Mo and Patrick Sutton's and all the Morah and Gerry Ryans, including a seriously gorgeous baby. It meant we were very privileged, something you appreciate when you're a parade junkie more used to being crushed. I've gaped at Lesbian Feminist Catholic Nuns marching in New York's Gay Pride, met the French marching into Killala and breast-fed in Central Park watching 20-metre floats flying above the trees in the Macy's parade. It's time to let everyone party here too.
Ireland Inc., as the breakfast speakers unselfconsciously referred to it, benefits obviously from the turnaround that has transformed a three-hour damp squib into a three-day party. People have fun, the tourist sector gets off to an early start and a new brand is born which spills goodies onto the rest of the home-grown range.
But if Dublin is to rival Rio and New Orleans in fact, rather than in rhetoric, perhaps it's also time to manage the brand with a little less self-congratulation and a bit more style.
Congratulations are certainly in order. Overall, this was the best festival yet: better events, better crowd management, better organisation and some magical touches of mind-reading in small spots of street spectacle that made the city sing. But Rio it was not. The why not was the parade itself: just as it was starting to get results from almost five years of nourishing a new community of street performers and exhibitors, the brand stepped in and put its products first.
If the next few years follow suit, the parade itself will become a vehicle for tourists instead of a magnet to them. All you'll need is a shiny tuba and a pair of Spandex tights.
A parade is imagination on the move. By thrilling us and shocking us and surprising us, even if we are President of Ireland and unused to getting our clothes wet, it asserts the "brand" simply by being brilliant. That excellence can't happen if you foster the runny egg syndrome which allows good events to be brought down by rogue performers and rogue aims. It won't happen when product placement is taken so literally that people are employed to carry ads.
This year, 19 endless marching bands paraded thigh-to-thigh before the official parade even started, and that went on to include even more marching bands with music just as dissonant because they blared each other out. Thin thighs, white thighs, thunder thighs - after a while, the crowd ran out of insults. I couldn't calculate the number of people represented there, apart from the moms and pops who accompanied them. Bear with me: there were loads.
Now, a minority of people may find hotel and guest house accounts highly entertaining. They probably look at marching bands and see bodies in accommodation units rather than Spandex suits. They may be so committed to delivering the tourist figures for Ireland Inc. that they figure the more marching bands we have, the better.
The problem is that the rest of us suffer the consequences in the parade. We understand the effort it may have taken to have all the girls of St Patricia of the Holy Amulet High School trained and dressed and brought to Ireland, but after the 120th Mary Bridget and her brass flute we may get bored.
By early afternoon the judges had decided to give prizes to Barcelona's Sarruga for its low-tech giant insects made of paper; to Limerick's Umbrella Theatre Company, partnered by Dublin Bus, on the theme of Gridlock; and to Zidane for some weird techno-beings with cyber attitudes. Some of us thought there needed to be more aerial acts, but that costs money. Others wanted more old fellas on bikes, or the Hare Krishna troupe, who always won a huge cheer in the parade. A young girl from Drimnagh called Aisling had entertained the crowd while a longeur was drifting by, singing Britney Spears instead of Molly Malone. She'd been great, but the few prizes were all taken.
Later, on St Patrick's night, old notions of how to celebrate had taken over. Real buckets of vomit heaved over tons of waste paper and empty cans. The city looked like a barbarian stronghold. Perhaps that happens in Rio, too.
If Ireland Inc. is serious about this brand, it can't stand still. The parade needs more investment, with an artistic director to manage it ruthlessly, research and development money for nourishing new ideas.
Fat ladies singing, floating shamrock, acts from all over the country and far away - it's all possible with this new national holiday. But the parade itself won't Rio so long as Ireland Inc remains bedazzled by the size of Mary Bridget's thighs.