Losing my soul and learning to smoke
Funky Monkeys, an indoor play place for children, is where parents’ souls go to die. But whilst there last week, sitting and mentally listing all the things I hate about my kitchen, I saw James O’Brien, a boy I hadn’t laid eyes on since I was fourteen.
I’d met him in Irish college. I say ‘met’ but ‘saw’ would be more apt. He was too cool and attractive to talk to me, and I was too embarrassed of my face, body, voice, clothes and personality to talk to him. But there were girls who weren’t embarrassed who even lined up to buy locks of his hair off him.
As I saw him in Funky Monkeys, looking not-so-special anymore and with the same dead-behind-the-eyes expression as all the other parents, I was grateful to my younger self for not parting with my money to buy his gross hair.
“They’re not queuing up now, are they, you prick?” I wanted to shout at him as he gently wiped his little girls face clean and smiled at her kindly.
I felt wise as I remembered how I’d put my money to much better use in Irish college, I bought cigarettes.
My three weeks in the west of Ireland were spent in a house where the woman in charge of me and the eight other teenage girls staying there, not only allowed but encouraged us to smoke. Back home in Dublin, I’d sneaked a smoke or two, but in Irish college, I lit up everywhere, openly, unashamed, like a seasoned smoker who couldn’t get through an hour without one.
I strolled around the house with a lit cigarette lolling from my lips. I smoked whilst talking, washing the dishes and even peeling potatoes. It didn’t matter that the smoke stung my eyes and made them water, the stabbing pain was canceled out by how grown-up smoking made me feel. I even ate my cereal in the morning with a fag burning in a mountain of ash beside me or placed clumsily between my fingers. At night, I’d lie down in bed in my nightdress, and say to the other children, “Just having my last smoke now before bed.” They’d nod knowingly and light up too.
We weren’t meant to smoke in the house, it was against the college rules and there were spot checks by Sean Mór, the college principal. Every now and again the woman of the house got a warning phone call that Sean was doing the rounds. She’d rush around telling us all to stub the smokes out, whilst she fanned the air and opened the windows. She was fooling no one. The house stank like one big ashtray but we never got in trouble because she denied it to the hilt. When Sean Mór batted away plumes of smoke and asked her accusingly if anyone was smoking, she shook her head and said, “No, no, not anseo”. What a hero.
So when I saw James and his now bald head, I wondered if he remembered selling his hair in Irish college and if he looks back at that time fondly, as I do with my smoking. I hope like me, even though he’s beaten down by life and Funky Monkey’s has left him a shell of a person, that he’ll always have his memories of Irish college.
