The answer is: some of my all-time favorite bands, singers, and songwriters hail from the city that I’ll be spending three more glorious days and nights submersed in.
Dublin.
Even though our group tour is planned around exploring the history, architecture, and castles in Ireland and Dublin is just one stop, this small-ish city is rich in musical history.
Did I know this before I booked my trip with the same July travel partners I’ve had since I graduated high school three years ago?
No.
But I researched it, and even though this travel group is not at all interested in rock and roll, I am.
Today, when we finished our tour of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a street band was playing in a local park that we happened to be walking through. We all stopped to listen for a beat. I dropped a couple Irish pounds, or punt Éireannach, in the open guitar case beside them.
One of the folks
near them handed me two tickets to a freaking U2 concert at Whelans! I of course googled and found out it was in fact a place where live music is played.
And now, as I stand and look in the mirror, I’m kind of freaking out and minutes from deciding that I will just pop my headphones on and listen to U2 in the comfort of my cozy room at the Skylon Hotel tonight.
Flopping back on my bed, I hit my iPod and scroll without looking, hoping to find my answer via lyrical guidance or assistance.
Weird?
Yes.
I mean, how many people use their iPod like a pre-teen would a magic 8-ball?
Probably just me, but it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.
As Dad would say, “If it’s not broke, no sense in fixing it.”
Proof the random scroll is accurate?
When I broke things off with Jòse, my first real boyfriend, because he wanted a long-distance relationship and I knew … from secondhand heartbreak … that it would never work, Fleetwood Mac told me via random scroll to “Go Your Own Way”, so I did.
Two weeks later, I decided Fleetwood Mac and the random scroll could suck it. I missed having a boyfriend. I was sure I missed us. I would tell him that he had been right when he said, even if he was traveling around the United States playing football, we could make it work. But when I called him, he was true to his character. José told me that he had slept with someone. He then told me it was just a one-night stand and that she had bailed in the middle of the night. That was when I realized how right Fleetwood Mac and the “random scroll” were. And true to my demons, caused not by my love life but those created by my older sister’s, Tessa, heartbreaks, as well as my parents, I bowed out.
No thank you. Not for me. No way.
Love isn’t for the faint of heart and, well … I’m trying to overcome my aversion to my heart fainting like a myotonic goat whenever I feel like maybe “he could be the one,” that I should allow myself to feel heartbreak firsthand … again. So, I go to the source of all my best decisions—the random scroll—and I bow out gracefully.
Again? you ask.
It wasn’t José who caused my first heartache; it was the boy who picked a thorn from my finger when I was far too young to remember. But for some sadistic reason, that moment has been allowed to stay etched in my memory ever since.
“Don’t be afraid of picking roses; just be careful.” Then he kissed my finger, and I kissed his cheek.
My tiny little, pre-k heart had been sent into the biggest tizzy it had ever experienced and has never been the same.
“Ben Sawyer,” I sigh his name while looking at the ceiling. He was the one boy in a herd of many who hung out on the family farm from time to time. And he … well he made my little girl self — weak in the knees.
Until he and my sister dated briefly, and then that one-dimensional romantic bubble burst.
I stop scrolling and hit play.
When the sound of the keys begin then the tambourine, guitar, and drums all work together to create the epic interlude of the song by my favorite rock band, U2, that was featured in my all-time favorite movie, Runaway Bride, I smile to myself as I accept the fate of the random scroll.
“I have climbed the highest mountains, I have run through the fields, only to be with you, only to be with you.”