I'd meet a guy.
While choosing my long-missed vegetables at Joyce's grocers in Knocknacarra, I spontaneously turned to the person next to me to ask how to figure the price since it was in kilos and my item was in grams -- or some such equation -- and as I inquired, I looked up into the face of the most handsome male I'd seen on my trip. Oi. No hole to jump into and cover myself up.
And I hadn't even brushed my teeth yet that morning. Double Oi.
He started asking me questions about where I was from, what I was doing there, and all of that, so there was no way to avoid a conversation. And here's the surprising part (aside from the fact he didn't back away from me, holding up a cross in front of his face) --- turns out he was a 31-year veteran high school geography teacher from Toronto, 13 years in Galway now. Divorced with five kids in the Irish school system, he proceeded to tell me about it (the ills, anyway) for the next 20 minutes, when he learned I spoke education.
We shared some moans concerning education, some laughs, and he asked if I missed it. I told him yes, seeing my colleagues daily and the fun times with my students and the times I could see them understanding somehing new, but no, not the grading or daily wakeups at 5:00AM. "So you're traveling the world on a teacher's pension!" he laughed. I laughed, too, biting my tongue.
When he asked what my plans were for the next few nights here, I chickened out and said my friend and I were doing some side trips and would probably just collapse at the end of the day in our borrowed house. (Note my "woman-traveling-alone" protective phrasing -- "my friend and I" -- never let anyone know you are on your own.)
Didn't even get his name. Nor he mine.
But a fun story. Better than the one the first time I went to London about the crowd of teenaged boys who flashed me at 8AM on a Sunday outside of St. Paul's Cathedral in London (and I have the photo to prove it.)
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