That’s Men: Their better future never happened

They greeted each other like long-lost friends. They were young men who had a look about them that made you check if your mobile phone was still in your pocket.

They had got on to the Luas without paying and now sat loudly exchanging experiences, uninhibited by the presence of others.

The first man had spent the night in a hostel which had no facilities for washing. They had asked him if he would like a permanent place there and he had told them to eff off.

The other found this so amusing he jumped up and down in his seat with excitement.

The first man was now telling a story about being attacked on New Year’s Eve. Someone had stabbed him in the neck and nearly killed him. He woke up in a hospital bed with two gardaí standing at the end of it. He told them to eff off.

All of this was greeted with much laughter.

His companion, beside himself with excitement, talked about getting beaten up and coming to in a hospital bed. As soon as he woke up he demanded his effin trousers, to be told by a nurse that they had cut up his clothes to get them off him and they were covered in blood anyway. Like the first man, he seemed to find his war story highly amusing.

Stolen car
The first man chimed in with a reminiscence of being in a stolen car that was going so fast they didn't realise gardaí were chasing them. More laughter. They escaped by driving straight over a roundabout and heading for the Dublin mountains at high speed. Along the way some guy who wanted to be a hero reversed his jeep in front of them and they rammed him.

A thin young woman who looked like Amy Winehouse, and who was sitting some rows back in the tram now asked the carriage in general if anyone knew where Pearse Street Garda station was.

The second man got involved in giving her directions which neither she nor anybody else understood.

"It's across the road from Trinity College, luv," the first man said, settling it.

“Ah, Trinity,” she said, nodding. She was quiet and poised but with a shadow of hardship on her very pale face. She fumbled in her bag and took a variety of items including an official-looking document which she studied.

I wondered for a few moments how it had worked out that she was going to Pearse Street Garda station and not across the road to Trinity College.

Had she taken a single mis-step in life along the way that sent her in (I suspect) an ultimately fatal direction?

Or was she one of those who are born into a world with the odds stacked so high against them that even an ordinary life is out of their reach?

The same could be asked of the two young men whose life expectancy, I am quite sure, is very low.

In vain
It struck me that these just might be the children of the children of the children for whom various campaigning organisations had sought a better future in the 1970s and 1980s.

Unfortunately, we are not all that interested in the children of the nation in this country, for all the self-regarding crap we go on with, so much of that work was in vain.

“Did you forget to take your medication?” the first man asked the second man as they made for the exit. “You’re getting a bit excited there.” Then they were gone.

The girl who looked like Amy Winehouse also got off and stood talking to one of those people who haunt the Lower Abbey Street Luas stop.

As the tram moved away, the official-looking document she had taken out to bring to the Garda station fluttered to the ground. She remained absorbed in her conversation and did not notice. Then she too was gone from our view and we left her and her wasted journey behind.

pomorain@yahoo.com

Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living , is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by email.