Flyin’ the Flag
How on earth did I find myself in Dublin Airport with a bunch of girls, none of whom knew each other, with a plane ticket to New York in my hand? I admit, I was a Celtic tiger cub, I embraced my new found wealth, or access to wealth as I didn’t actually have any money. The credit card was my saviour, my hope, my ticket to anywhere and my way to buy anything I wanted. When Joyce, my long time friend since school rang me up and said “Hey Ciara, want to go to New York for Paddy’s weekend?” I replied “Joyce that’s only a week away, where on earth am I gonna find money” She said “listen my friend Marion works in a travel agency and she got 6 tickets for only 199.00, we’ve one seat left”. “Who’s going” I asked “well I know Marion and she has a friend who has another friend and they’re going, come on Ciara it’ll be great crack”. “But I don’t know any of them J” I protested “Sure neither do I”, Joyce said light-heartedly, “we’ll get to know them and sure anyway we have each other..come on” I thought about my lovely shiny new credit card in my purse, it really was a lovely card, purple, smooth to touch, curvy edges and so small. I had every intention of only using it in an emergency, but this was sort of an emergency as the ticket had to be bought today so I said “sure why not Roche (that’s Joyce’s surname) count me in!” After a few screams and both of us jumping up and down like mad women on our phones, I gave her my newly found credit card number and ended up one week later at 6am with a bunch of girls I never met and began a weekend I’ll never forget. There was me, Joyce, Marion, Ronnie, Linda and Caroline who for some reason we nicknamed Caroline-in-the–city, (after an American sitcom by that name) and forever more kept calling her that.
Now to say we were an eclectic bunch of girls is an understatement, but that didn’t matter! We were heading to New York for Paddy’s weekend and all that was on our minds was fun, which began the moment we checked in. Ronnie bought herself a huge Irish hat, you know the type..Tall, aluminous green with a Guinness logo somewhere attached, and of course we were all dressed the part too. Six idiots dressed in green regalia and nobody really batted an eye in Dublin, and considering it wasn’t Paddy’s day yet, you’d think we’d get the odd look! I think I wore tri-colour zoggabong type head gear and Joyce had on some sort of GAA shirt, don’t ask me what county, Linda had on a Kiss Me I’m Irish T-shirt and Marion wore a baseball cap which simply stated Póg Ma Thoin! Caroline-in-the-city had a gigantic pair of shamrock glasses to complete the ensemble! Yes, we were Irish and proud!
We boarded the plane and before I even sat down I think I asked the air hostess for a drink! Not a fan of flying I have to say and to be honest I was still a bit uneasy about getting to know these girls. I needed the Dutch courage! Getting drunk at 50,000 feet or whatever the height is has its advantages and disadvantages!! The latter being the queue for the loo, and having to pretend you’re sober so the Air Hostess doesn’t cut you off, the former being the alcohol seems to get into your bloodstream an awful lot faster, especially if you’ve taken a wee valium before the flight! I was seated beside Linda, and got to know her very well in the six hours from here to there. She was from Limerick and had just broken up with her boyfriend of six years. They had been engaged but she found him in bed with her best friend and I guess you could say that put a dampener on the nuptial intentions. What better way to get over an event like that, than to hop on a plane with the wedding money. Three hours into the flight and I would say my Dutch courage was kicking in. We weren’t a rowdy bunch of girls but we were certainly drunk and when we finally touched down, the Air Hostess informed us we had drunk the plane dry!
So it was with wobbly legs and slurred speech that six green, yellow and gold clad girls landed in the Big Apple, eager to continue the fun. Now walking through JFK wasn’t exactly the same as walking through Dublin airport and now we were getting noticed and we certainly got the attention of Immigration. American’s aren’t exactly with it when it comes to humour, especially these Immigrations fellow’s, I don’t actually think they ever see daylight by the looks of them. They of looked very stern in their grey starched uniforms, most of them pale, neatly cut hair and not a smile between them. Three of them immediately headed for Ronnie, and as she walked through the scanner the alarms went off. She only forgot to take off a bit of jewellery or something, and because we were all slightly three sheets to the wind, we just pissed ourselves laughing which of course didn’t help matters. When they asked her to remove her hat, I honestly thought I would die laughing. I guess you had to be there, but it was probably one of the funniest things to witness. A red headed girl, with a bright tall green hat on her head, being sternly observed by these military type men, and then they frisked her! I ask you! They eventually let her through and the rest of us pretended to be meek little sheep and followed through as well. We had to fill out forms, and of course we each had to listen to the “have you packed your own bag, did you ever leave your bag unattended, do you want to declare anything, are you carrying weapons of any kind” speech. When he asked the last question I replied, cos I was drunk and thought it would be hilarious “actually yes, I did pack a weapon, a hammer…its green white and gold and you blow it up”. Now the girls practically cracked up there and then, but Joyce seeing the Immigration officers face chipped in that I was only messing and told me to shut up! So I did! This guy’s obviously had a humour lobotomy so luckily they let us through!
And that was the start of my Paddy’s Day weekend in New York, already the crack was mighty, little did I know how much madder things were about to get.
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