Milk and Onions: USA & Ireland Little Differences #15
Solving the World’s Problems.
I used to get my hair cut in Ringsend in Dublin. I would walk from where I worked in Ballsbridge, ignoring much nearer barbers, and go to Cecil.
With the exception of that one time in England where a young woman cut my hair to repair the cutting of it I did the day before when drunk, nobody came close to Cecil when it came to taking a scissors or trimmer to my hair.
And Cecil pampered your face. Included in the haircut. The cheapest haircut. Nobody from any profession had ever pampered my face. And nobody has pampered it since.
I mention this because even before I had self-cutting hair, women did not freely walk up to me and speak with me. Women of sane mind that is. Not even when my face wore the obvious benefits of face-pampering.
This is true the world over. I don’t expect women to approach me as I walk in the dark of Kansas City at midnight on Christmas Eve, any more than my 3am walks, but the times and places are irrelevant. Women do not approach me. Pubs, nightclubs, churches, bus-stops, or lingerie departments, it makes no difference.
Yes, often I am scowling and spitting, and there was that time I threw a bar stool at an approaching woman, but I had already made it clear from some distance that I didn’t want to dance.
As if to balance out this social deficiency in my life, the powers that be have sent to me more than my share of one grouping. Old men. As you can doubtless tell, these countless meetings have instilled in me a great wisdom and understanding of the world. And it has always been so.
Some of my earliest memories are of ferries to England, and pubs in Kerry, with old men imparting great secrets of the civilized world just for me. On travels this has happened no less. Macedonia, Hungary, Nebraska, and the Himalaya. It happens to me everywhere.
Even in the jungles of Cambodia the women working on their looms, as they sat underneath their stilted houses, would laugh uncontrollably as I passed by, cycling through crater-sized potholes. Yet typically a few miles on from the laughter an old Buddhist monk would magically appear and beckon me into the deep foliage to a ladder at the top of which profound insights would be shared.
I think it happens everywhere because people are quite similar the world over. Well, with the odd little difference.
With Ireland and the USA being the two places I have spent most time residing in, I’ve noticed a consistent difference in how the older men of these countries convey their sage advice. So I thought I’d share a couple of examples representative of so many such congresses.
America. The Midwest. A field. A man I’ve noticed around in the city driving a big red truck, always empty. With the first negative thought out of my head, he offers a solution. The solution.
Everybody and the world would be fine if people stopped drinking milk. He has the statistics to back it up, and he quotes them. There are a lot of them. And the science. Did you know? No, I’d no idea. How could people, the world, be so stupid and consume dairy products, I wondered. He gave me more science. I was so convinced I went straight home and drank 27 cups of tea with just 2% milk instead of full-fat. Just in case.
Eight years earlier. Ireland. Donegal. By a lake. I am about to row out to the island with a tenth century stone fort. I say something negative and he nods agreement. He knows I’m ready for the solution.
Everybody and the world would be fine if everybody ate a raw onion a day. He has no statistics. No science, no legal footnotes or disclaimers. Just worldly widsom and a spiritual nod of certainty. I was so convinced that as soon as I got back to Dublin I treated a whole raw onion as a hand fruit. That was thirteen years ago. I have yet to eat a second one.
Sorry I’ve failed in my part, and the world is still a mess, but if you’re the kind of person besieged by young women or young men, then you may not know these things. Regardless of style, the wisdom is much the same. Don’t consume milk or dairy produce. Do eat raw onions. Save the world. Do it now.
If you look closely at the start of that Angelica Huston movie based on Brendan O’Carroll’s The Mammy, you can see Cecil’s in the background. I’m an ex-pat; I look at backgrounds.
See More of the Less Celebrated Differences Between the USA and Ireland:
• Robins
• Festivals and the definite article
• Temperature Talk
NOTE: Solving The World’s Problems has also been published in the Midwest Irish Focus
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