Author: damienowens

We’re not very keen on formal rites of passage in this culture, are we? And confirmation doesn’t count. A confirmation candidate is a child who was inducted into a cult at birth and then fed cultish propaganda for a decade or more. Dressing her up and asking if she’s still “in” is not a rite of passage, it’s a Movie of the Week. But I digress. We don’t abandon our adolescents in the woods at midnight, for example, leaving them to find their own way back to the village using nothing more than a sharpened bone and a cow’s heart. “Last one back’s a succubus!” No one does that, mind you, I just made it up as an excuse to say “succubus”. And yet our adolescents seem perfectly capable of finding the woods all on their own. Take a walk through any leafy glade in the land – even a park will do – and you will find unmistakable traces of the ceremonies that they themselves have been conducting since time began in the late sixties. As far as we can tell from the detritus, these ceremonies are brought to us by the letter C: cider, cigarettes, crisps and an occasional crusty condom. (That was an image you could have done without, I’m sure, but don’t shoot the messenger. Take a walk in the park.) What have crisps got to do with it, that’s what I want to know. “Right, I’ve got the booze and fags and johnnies. And take a look at this bad boy – a six-pack of smokey bacon!” Is that what they imagine adulthood is all about? Drinking, smoking, screwing and eating crisps? Jesus. If only.

Rooting around in the back of my wardrobe recently, I came across a small deposit of ancient footwear. I immediately forgot all about Narnia (it wasn’t working anyway) and started pondering the great gutty mystery. Remember gutties? They used to form one corner of the young Irish male footwear triangle, along with “proper” shoes and 12-hole Docs. The Docs were for pretending to be hard at junior discos. The proper shoes were for mass and, if praying didn’t work, juvenile court. Gutties were for everything else, including twenty-five-a-side football, watching telly, cycling, and climbing your friends. They were battered, dirty, smelly things whose physical integrity was under constant threat. One wrong scuff and you’d find yourself in a battle to save your very sole. Not that you cared, of course. When a pair of gutties finally flew apart (just as you were taking the crucial penalty), you simply bought another pair. They cost a fiver, for Christ’s sake. They were practically disposable. Looking back, it’s hard to see exactly how and when the modest gutty of yore began its journey to the promised land of trainerdom, with its air-sacs, fashion shoots, and three-figure price tags. It was done with such stealth and skill that you really have to wonder if anything is safe. Could they do it with socks, for example? Will we be looking back in twenty years time and saying, “Remember when you could get a pair for a few Euros and they were just bits of wool that kept your feet warm?” I hope not. Because if that were to happen, the first thing to go would be the word. I can live without “gutties”. But I’m really very fond of “socks.”

Attempt a haiku;
lose interest half-way through.
Something something wind.

No good with names, me. Useless altogether. I hear a name, I smile and say it back to the person, I say it to myself thirty-five times, I come up with a little mnemonic and then, boom, it’s gone. This is no way to live. For a start, it’s rude. Or, more correctly, it comes across as being rude. When someone forgets your name, you can’t help but feel devalued, trivialised. I know I do when it happens to me. It’s no good telling yourself that people meet people all the time and that, since each and every one of us insists on having a name of our own,  mistakes are inevitable. You drop your chin and wonder “Christ, am I that forgettable?” Then you say your name again, only quieter this time, your confidence in bits around your feet. Well, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of making people feel that way. I’m tired of calling people “Ehoheh”, as in “Hello there … eh … oh … eh …” I’m tired of the squinting and the brain-racking and the excuse-making (“Me got parasitic worm living in head”). So I’ve made a decision. From now on, unless I have documentary evidence to the contrary, I’m going to call everyone “Pat”. Men, women, young, old, I’m not discriminating. Pats as far as the eye can see. Granted, I’ll be wrong 99.9% of the time but that’s not the point. The point is that I will say “Pat” with total confidence, as though I had thought of nothing else but him (or her) since the last time I met her (or him). There’s a big difference, I’m guessing, between simply getting someone’s name wrong and just staring at them like a goldfish, all flapping gums and inadequate memory. At least I hope there is. Because my problem’s getting worse. If matters continue to deteriorate, I’m liable to get bludgeoned to death one of these days by (brace yourself) an unknown assailant.