The "Accent-dental" Meeting

“I think I’m allergic to essays.”

I couldn’t believe he had the audacity to look in my direction let alone attempt to speak with me. After striding in with ten minutes remaining in class, this red-headed lad passed by the empty row behind me, discarded the vacant row in front of me, and consciously chose not only my row but my seat for himself. It may seem like I’m blowing this situation way out of proportion, but I had been, from the moment my alarm forgot to shrill in my ear that morning, the recipient of a series of unfortunate events. Because one of my housemates had taken a late night shower the evening before, the fleeting hot water that would usually last at least twenty minutes in the morning switched from scorching hot to freezing cold in a span of three minutes. Shampoo foam was growing in my hair like it had a life of its own, reaching its roots down into my eyes and nose. I had no other choice but to stand in the back of the shower like a criminal against the wall before a firing squad and plunge my head into the liquid ice raining down in torrents from the shower head. My moodiness caused by the violent wake-up call was quickly thwarted by the rays of sunshine passing through the window just above my bed in Nilands House. It had rained relentlessly for the past four days, and being an outdoors person, I was craving sunshine to the point of suffering from withdrawals. My temperament was becoming affected by the dreary skies that leaked a rain symbolic of my attitude. But the delicious light beaming onto the hard wooden floor was an instant remedy to my seasonal affective disorder.
  

  I proceeded to occupy myself with a number of unwonted additions to my morning toiletries such as blow drying my hair, straitening it with a flat iron, applying make-up to my eyes, and fastidiously selecting an outfit that reflected my revived cheerfulness of the day’s commencement. But alas, as soon as I had wiped away a smudge of eye liner that had escaped the corner of my eye, I was mocked by the dark angry clouds that now congested the formerly clear sky. The window began to collect raindrops while I stood in the center of a gradually dimming room. I looked at my sleeping housemate, snuggled in her thick duvet, and bitterly envied her. 

A handful of more trivial nuisances transpired during my walk to NUIG which were more accumulating than singularly significant. I will mention them quickly in order to avoid tangents that will interfere with the story of this red-headed boy. First my umbrella caved in to the wind, rendering it completely useless. My straightened hair was drenched through and through so that it inevitably mushroomed out into what looked like one humungous stretched out cotton ball. My non-waterproof mascara clung to my eyelids in splotches of black while my outfit became more like a second skin. In short, I looked like a circus clown.

I finally entered the building in which my class was located but finding the classroom was more of a challenge. After scouring my face and pinning back my hair into a tolerable bun, I eventually inquired three different people who directed me down three different hallways. At this point, I was exasperated and careless. I poked my head into each door, listening to the lecture’s material to decipher if they were focused on Native Americans considering that was the course I had signed up for. Having eavesdropped four times unsuccessfully, I found the correct room on my fifth attempt though the door was marked by a different room number than that on my syllabus sheet. Luckily, I spotted a seat at the very end of one of the cascading rows and determined to slip in, sit down, and avoid being any interruption to the instructor. I managed this easily but my stealth was almost betrayed by the spring-functional seat bottom and low table that stretched all the way down to the other side of the row. Despite the limited leg room provided for a five-eleven girl and the twenty minutes of class that had already elapsed, I had discreetly procured myself an easy escape once class had been dismissed. All I had to do was slide out and walk up the stairs that lined the right side of the class. That’s what would have happened, and should have happened, if that miscreant hadn’t spoiled my plans with only ten minutes left to go. 

“Could you move down a seat?”

Without a second thought I smiled at him pleasantly, as was my automatic response to any stranger’s acknowledgement, and acquiesced to his polite request. I was disgusted with myself for relinquishing my perfect seat without a moment’s hesitation. Sure, his request was put to me nicely, but why did he have to pick my row? Why couldn’t he take one more step up or down and plant himself below me, or better yet, above me where he was out of sight. The nerve of him! I flicked my eyes in his direction to determine his kind of person while I prepared my bag for the move, and what was he doing? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! No pencil, no paper, no nothing! Just folded arms, a cocked head that looked to be a burden to his neck, and a slouched posture implying pure indifference. Any thread of potential friendliness was already dangerously thin, and I would have resuscitated it for him if he hadn’t been so at his leisure in my cherished seat. Then and there I assumed him to be nothing but a scoundrel and sentenced him to a cold shoulder.  

What’s worse, I was so distracted by my fiery indignation and so desirous to remove myself from the close proximity of his person that I was heedless of the springing seat bottom that slapped up against the back with an echoing bang, turning the heads of the neighboring students. I was too mortified to look up at the professor. There was some difficulty when I tried to slide my long legs out from under the table, which made the whole scene awkward and conspicuous; not to mention that the obnoxious noise the zipper made as I dragged my bag had caused the professor to pause mid-sentence and resume only after I had quickly situated myself two chairs away from the spawn of Satan. I was resolute to despise his revolting existence. 

“I think I’m allergic to essays.”

 At these words I turned to him, half savagely and half curiously, though still prepared to intimidate him with my death stare. I should have known from the consecutive failed attempts that I wasn’t trained well enough in the field of snobbery. In fact, I just wasn’t made for it. My death stare defense was merely an act of frowning, which to a stranger was apparently unperceivable. I glanced at his expression, so as to judge his meaning of conversing with me, and felt my obstinacy broken by his genuine smile. My over exaggerated wrath had melted into a fine flattery that every girl feels when a man’s attention is solely hers especially when unasked for. As for me personally, humor is always the best ice breaker.

“I am, too. But sadly I am an English major.” The gates were opened and a flood of incomprehensible words saturated with a thick western accent came rushing at me. I hadn’t grasped the Irish accent just yet, and here he was force feeding it to me. His sentences shot out of him like bullets from a machine gun, in which only a few of his phrases hit me clearly. One of these sentences struck me as a potential insult, so I stopped his wagging tongue with my intruding question:

“Did you call me a Yank?”
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“Yeah, I thought you might be Eastern European or American, so I wasn’t completely wrong. In fact, I’m always right. One time I said I was wrong, but it turned out I was right.”

I laughed at this example of witticism that the Irish are said to possess, or at least that was one of the many stereotypes my grandma had listed for me.  Being Irish herself, she was more concerned about the Irish habit of pulling your leg, as she would phrase it. Nonetheless, I was glad that the term Yank harmlessly meant American. Somewhat excited that I had understood at least this short dialogue, I thought it best to stick to the question of my family origin.

“Well, you’re right in both aspects. My grandpa was Czech and my grandma is Irish.”

My hopes were short lived as he again began to spill out words, ceasing only to catch a breath of air. I was relieved that our conversation was conducted mostly by him due to his voluble trait. This allowed me to listen and not respond until I felt the weight of silence fall upon me. There were only a few times that he had stopped and looked at me expectantly as if waiting for an answer, in which I filled the void with an unconfident  ‘Yeah’, ‘Oh Really?’, or laugh that was undeniably fake and delayed. I could tell from his bemused look that I had given him a plausible answer about 5% of the time

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“Why did you decide to come to Ireland?”

The answer to this question was deep down somewhere in the depths of my childhood romance. When I was in the pretense phase of my play-days, I often submitted to a wanderlust that launched me into the labyrinth of my imagination. One day I would be jeopardizing my life in a spaceship captained by my brothers, and other days I would be creating sand civilizations in the backyard, but none of these surreal worlds ever elicited the feelings that the fantasy of fairies did. The excitement would only arise at night, when everyone was asleep but me, and there in the backyard stood the hoary oak tree that us kids adored since it was the best climbing tree in the yard and consequently, the world. Its presence was especially majestic in the night when it was silhouetted against the moonlight and somewhat obscured by starless evenings.  The breathless quiet demanded attention to be brought to the visual sense, which without a doubt, was focused on the large towering tree that expanded its branches with flickering leaves high up into the sky. My eyes often perceived little lanterns partially hidden behind a number of the green leaves resembling fallen stars glittering within the web of entangled branches. A feeling of vitality radiated from the trunk with an alluring connection of one life source with another.

I was could move though I was hypnotized, and stepped forward like a sleep walker. I stood as a pebble before a mountain, but kept a safe distance from the magic I was looking upon. There was a strange understanding of a barrier between the seen and the unseen, and then, with a draft of wind, came the petite orbs of winged lights. From an opening between two sinuous roots drifted a line of floating flames, each spiraling around the trunk of the tree before perching on their chosen branch. Their lights sparked a color of combined blue and green while the little lanterns were of a pure white.  The flames bobbed from one side of the foliage to the other, twirling with each other in what seemed like a festival of dances. I wanted to be a part of it, or at least be let in on their secret mode of communication, but I was unnoticed by the little beings. This episode is but a dream now, and no doubt an illusion created by a sleep-deprived child, but the connection to something magical has always remained with me. It wouldn’t be very impressive for me to relate this absurd reverie to my new acquaintance, so instead I took a short cut.

“Don’t laugh, but I’ve always had a soft spot for fairies. I loved ‘em when I was a kid and still have a strong adoration for them. I don’t know where I heard it from, but I’ve always had this notion that Ireland was a place of fairies and other such lore, but even before that, I’ve always wanted to visit Ireland since I was five.”

“Five! That’s awfully young! But you’ve finally made it over. Well, you’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for fairies. There’s a great many tales about ‘em here.”

“Is that right? Do you happen to know any?”

“None off-hand. My grandma was one for telling fairy tales, and even my mother to some extent, but I’ve nowhere near the talent they have for telling tales.” Miraculously I had begun to piece together his words into complete sentences. Some words were still a little wobbly, but I had finally gotten the gist of this red-head’s accent. 

“That’s a shame because I’m an aspiring writer. I’ve even gone out of my way to buy a voice recorder in case I muster enough courage to ask a stranger for a story.”

“Ah, well, if you’ve gone through the trouble I might as well chance it. I’m sure I can think of one all the way through if you’d like.”

 “That would be amazing. I’d really appreciate it.”

“Not at all. If you give me your phone number I can give you a ring to meet up.”

“Oh, I only bought this phone the other day and I’ve already forgotten the number!”

“Not to worry, I can give you mine and you can call me, then I can save your number.”

“Sounds good. What’s your name?” My understanding of his accent went out like an antenna wavering in a storm, and he had to repeat his name three times, spell it, and then punch in the phone for me before I discovered his name was Adrian. As he hit the call button to ring himself, I realized that I had never agreed to give a stranger my number so quickly.  

“Brilliant. Now I have your number. I just need your name.” I smiled at his question, knowing that my name would prove to be as difficult for him as his was for me, but eventually he typed it in his phone and called me to make sure. My phone jingled at me with a bright ADRIAN flashing on the screen. At that moment it had occurred to me that I had no clue where the gym was, and I wanted to make the first day of indoor volleyball, which was about to begin.

“Great! I just have one more request.”

“Yeah?”

“Could you show me where the gym is?” Off we went again, strolling around the campus with him yakking away in my ear and me getting the hang of his speech. He seemed harmless enough, and extremely friendly, which, regretfully, put me on my guard, but despite my automatic defense-mode, I found that it was easy to lower my shield with him. When I admitted that I had never been drunk and that I didn’t cuss, I expected him to contrive some quick getaway, but instead he commended me with phrases like ‘That’s an admirable attribute and very ladylike which is a rare quality these days’, and thus we continued chatting in a light manner. Eventually we reached the gym and said our good byes with a successful understanding of what was being said. I was to meet him at Finnegan’s over some tea the following day, which I confess, tickled my fancy. An Irishman inviting me for tea? Not coffee nor a drink at a bar, but tea? Well, I guess…why not?

© Mikal Minarich