April 26, 2018 · Dublin, Ireland
It’s A-life
My world changed that morning when I slipped out of darkness into light. Not the morning of my birth but the day I awoke, at age 22, from a concussion, that had been given to me at the feet of 9 lads on DunLaoghaire pier in Ireland, in my first week of foreign travel. Thinking they should have my cap they pounced upon me, kicking me at the back of my knees and using my head for a football. It was not until they heard words come from me they stopped and queried if I were Irish. I was not, they apologized, returned my cap and walked my date and I to the bus so we could make it to the hospital.
Fortunately, my date was studying to be a nurse and helped to stop the bleeding and cleaned me up, the best she could, before we made it to the emergency room. There I passed out for several hours with a concussion and awoke to a newspaper at my bedside. An article about the CYC Catholic Youth Council and programs they had to keep kids out of trouble. Not an easy task at the time where the inner-city unemployment rate was 33% and life expectancy 45 years.
And more people were leaving Ireland at a faster rate than the birth rate.
I was released, after the x-rays showed a hairline fracture, with a bit of a chip, in the chin, and the rest of the damage was bruises, contusions and the concussion. From there I went to a payphone and called the offices of the CYC and volunteered my services, to aid those who need more productive things to do than pummel passersby’s.
It was February at the time, and they said they would have a paying position, in May. Perfect for me since I had a 3-month train pass to travel Europe and visit American university friends who were studying in Munich, Germany.
I spent 3 months visiting with my classmates in Germany. Visiting Europe from Scandinavia to Italy and France to Germany, close to 20 countries and all. I did not let my encounter with the lads in Ireland, the night with French accented rats under a train bridge in Paris, the full internal and external body search performed on by a Swedish Female vice cop deter me. I also had my photo published in the Braunsweig Germany, newspaper, demonstrating against nuclear weapons, being a proxy for my German student friends who would have been arrested or black-listed for doing so. A Pyrex dish as a gift of appreciation from a fellow traveler. an Egyptian teen, I aided in Luxembourg. With the challenges come rewards. It’s a-life, my life to live. I even took the opportunity to help a disabled German teen, at the hands of two thugs, to avoid the fate, I had suffered in Ireland.
I returned to Ireland as promised, and spent the next 6 months, with the type of kids that attacked me and took them out to nature, played out door games and even engaged them in community dances.
This was the time that Mosh dancing was getting started, and a rival neighborhood gang had some promising musicians, who went on to be known as U-2, yes that U-2. The were good kids, living a tough life, that I would not want to wish on anyone.
The office you see in this picture was the office I shared with others, working to help the children of the Church Street Neighborhood. Which was Ironically behind the Four Courts, the Supreme Court where laws where made, next to Church street where laws were broken.
In my visit today, I saw they neighborhood is being Gentrified. Unemployment rate now is less than 6%, 27% than before. I encountered some of the residents, now in their 60’s, 15 years beyond the average life expectancy, of when I worked there before. That being said, there are still the remnants of challenges faced, tires with flats, and people still living in the flats. Abandoned cars, hopefully not lives abandoned.
I do not know if I made any difference for them in the months I was there, but I did learn one thing, in life you may be beaten, but you do not have acquiesce and let it beat you. I am glad I did not use my negative encounters as excuses to hide, but instead used them to engage. Better to be engaged than enraged. A rainbow at the end of the day, brings more light than clouds of anger and disappointment.
