I looked forward to going to boarding school. For me it meant a plane trip, and being a fanatic about airplanes, I was excited to go. I didn’t think of Ireland as a strange place full of strangers. I’d been there before, and even went to school there before the police discovered a car bomb outside the bank up the town and Mom decided to take us to the safety and warmth of Portugal. Lastly, going to Ireland meant I’d not have to attend the local junior high where, according to my older brother, the older boys did terrible things to the young ones. He told it so much better than I can remember. It was because of him we were both going in the first place. Getting arrested for breaking and entering to steal a case of beer was the last straw. Something had to be done.
It was my brother, Roger, who suggested Irish boarding school to straighten him out, and my parents thought that was a great idea. I don’t know if my brother was scheming at the time or genuinely wanted to get straight. After his friend across the street put the barrel of his father’s .357 into his mouth and blew the back of his head off, everyone was open to anything that might help.
So, during the summer of 1976 while America prepared for its bicentennial, I was getting poked and prodded and shot full of vaccines to protect me from diseases I didn’t even know Ireland had. Roger joked it was all to protect Ireland, not me, and we had a wee chuckle over Guinness and cigarettes in the camper. “A wee taste of Ireland,” Roger had said before slugging back half the bottle. I took a sip and hoped Ireland tasted better. I was eleven years old. What did I know?
I stepped off the plane at Shannon Airport in early August and was treated to my first bomb scare at the local hotel. The staff ushered everyone outside. Everyone except my mom and the funny old lady sitting under the stairs drinking gin. She wasn’t scared. Mom was. She didn’t say so, but I could tell. She asked if I wanted to go outside with the others or stay inside with her. “It’s your life, son, and if there is a bomb it could be anywhere, and with all the glass it wouldn’t matter much: we’d all be cut to ribbons either way.”
Thankfully, there was no bomb. Not that day.
