You will soon see that, although I had an opportunity to do so, I did not kiss the Blarney Stone. I should have.Every St. Patrick's Day brings special memories of our trip to Ireland in 1998 with our friends, Camilla and Norm Perrill. It also brings memories of two faux pas that the Perrills and Carl will never let me forget.
We rapidly learned that Irish pubs are the very best places for lunch and they're also great for just hanging out and observing the locals. If you want to talk to the Irish while you're in Ireland, just go to a pub and you'll get all the conversation you can handle.
One thing we didn't know about was the Bank Holidays when it seems that everyone in Ireland has to go somewhere for the weekend. Suddenly the little town where we were staying was packed to the gills and we couldn't eat dinner until 9:00 p.m. Meanwhile, we found an un-busy pub on the outskirts of town to while away the time. We were the only patrons.
Knowing what vast quantities of Guinness the Irish consume, we were, nevertheless, saddened to see that the bartender was already so far gone that he was having difficulty speaking. As the Irish tend to do, after pouring our drinks he joined us by the fire and we began talking. We were stuck discussing the trials of driving on the wrong side of the road, etc., while listening to his slurred speech. The bartender offered that his mother and her friend rented a German car. She was driving on the wrong side of the road and came to a bridge with no guard rails. The bridge was only as wide as the car. His mother's friend turned to her and said, "Now DON'T PANIC!"
Trying to make friendly conversation, I said politely, "So are you German?" whereupon he replied, "NO! I'm Irish! I just have a speech impediment!" Trying to recover with at least a small shred of composure, I said, "Oh. I thought you said your mother rented a German car." "She did!" he replied. "She was on VACATION! In GERMANY!"
So much for jumping to conclusions. As it turned out the bartender had suffered a stroke at an early age and hadn't been drinking Guinness at all. Norman almost had a stroke himself from trying to keep a straight face during this exchange and he vowed to never let me forget it. He hasn't.
Later that evening as we arrived at our car about 10:30 p.m., a man pulled up beside us in an old sputtering car with no headlights, parked, got out, and said, "Air ye enjayin' it?" I thought he said something about jail so I said "No." He was so astonished that we had to sort out the conversation in order for me to explain that I really was enjoying Ireland. Given my track record, I decided to keep my mouth shut for a while and let someone else – anyone else - do the talking.
Two faux pas in one evening were just too much.
