My recent pilgrimage to Ireland: the Old Sod, the Emerald Isle, the Motherland—began with a nine and half hour direct flight from Los Angeles to Dublin. I rode on the airline with the big shamrock, AerLingus—which I believe is Gaelic for some sort of intimate act.
If I was to have any of that purported Irish luck, I wasn’t getting it on this flight. Normally, I sleep about as well on planes as I do sitting tied to a splintered, wooden chair under a bright spotlight being periodically beaten and punched in the gut by captors yelling at me in a foreign language—in short, not very well—and the two red-faced infants seated directly across from me ensured that streak would continue.
Anticipating that I wouldn’t sleep, I’d brought along my notebook and pen, and my iPod, replete with sixteen hours worth of songs. I was also provided a choice of six different channels on the little screen in the seat-back in front of me. I watched a one-hour concert of Ireland’s own U2, which is mandatory viewing for crossing the Atlantic. The beginning of the song, “Where the Streets Have No Name,” could raise the lethargy from the bones of the dead. Feeling pumped and on a roll, I then watched Walk the Line, which was just as good the second time, and then a little of the movie, Just Friends, starring Ryan Reynolds.
This was bearable until the first major plot point hit. Ryan’s character is on a private plane that happens to have trouble and lands ... right in his hometown ... where he hasn’t been in ten years ... and can’t fly out for a few days ... right at Christmas-time and right when the girl he’d always had a crush on is back as well ... and then it took a turn for the “too coincidental.” In a harried attempt to save my dying (and flying) brain cells, I hit the off button to my TV repeatedly but it wouldn’t turn off.
I informed the middle-aged, Irish flight attendant (all of whom were named Mary) that it seemed to be broken. She essentially replied “Isn’t that too bad for you?,” and went back about her Mary way.
Then Mary, or maybe it was the other Mary, announced that for dinner we could choose between the chicken or the lasagna ... unless they were out of one. This would be my introduction to the Irish attitude of what I’ll call “It is what it is.” Frustrating at first, but ultimately, affirming.
I met up with my sister, Katie, her husband, Jeremy, and friends—the O’Donnell’s—in the Dublin airport. We rented our car from Dan Dooley, not Dan the man himself, but Dan the man’s car rental company. There’s a habit in Ireland to name businesses after their owners. We expect this for bars and restaurants here in the US, but the Irish take it a few steps further.
Want insurance in America? Choose between companies such as Mercury, State Farm, and American Family. In Ireland, your insurance needs can be served by companies such as John Quincy, Patrick Sweeney, and John McGrath. Need prescriptions in Ireland? Go to Tom O’Donnell Chemist (known in the U.S. as a Pharmacist).
The Irish, like the English (by the way, this is the last time you’ll see the phrase the Irish like the English, because they don’t, but more on that later ...), drive on the left side of the road with steering wheels on the right side of the car. I should qualify that the term “road” is a loose interpretation of what one would expect a road to be in the U.S.
In the U.S., Irish roads would best be classified as “bike paths.” I’m not talking about small country roads here, but major highways, where each approaching vehicle induces heart-stopping pause, prayer, and digestive concern. When these roads were built, there must have been a mandate that not one stretch could be straight for more than twenty feet. They say St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, but I’d be willing to wager that it was the roads.
