Philadelphia Weekly

I haven't ridden the handlebars in years, but I remembered just how to hoist myself up there backward and sling my butt down behind them like a laundry bag. Butt's a little bigger than the last time I did this, though.

R. merges with traffic, confident as could be. He's a seasoned city cyclist, he's strong, and I trust him, but now we're approaching an intersection and I can't help myself. I let out a little shriek. R. swerves, and a guy in a teensy car honks his horn, making me scream again.

"Don't move your bum around so much!" he yells, but I can feel him laughing behind me.

I should be exhausted, but I'm flying, gliding through downtown Dublin at night, past clumps of people at the crosswalks weighed down by shopping bags, past Grafton Street lit up like a Christmas tree-Mr. Dickens, meet Mr. Edison. The intriguingly small present from R. is stuffed deep in my sweatshirt pocket, his breath is on my cheek, and the city is a beautiful blur. I don't even care what I look like.

18:50: It's dark when I get into the center of town. I've got only 10 minutes to shop-and that's if this is the late-shopping day. Please, please, please let Wednesday be the late-shopping day.

I try the door at Carrolls, otherwise known as the leprechaun store, and it gives. Yes.

What a ridiculous place this is. Everything is emerald green, kelly green, field green. Diddle-ee-dee music blares, and they're selling leprechaun costumes for dogs.

"T'anks very much," says the beleaguered but civil woman at the register as she wraps my Guinness bottle opener and "An Irish Blessing" sign. How can real Irish people stand to work here? This leprechaun shit is like blackface. I thank her, hoping my embarrassing presents will fit in my already massively overstuffed suitcase.

18:30: "Shane, aren't your parents gonna miss you at some point?"

18:22: "Dear Dr. Donnelly, Attached please find my essay on the theories of modernism. I know you wanted us to drop them off in the postgraduate office, but I'm afraid I won't have time to get to campus before I fly home to America tomorrow morning. Also, I should have asked you this earlier, but I felt the MLA guidelines for citing electronic resources were unclear about the distinction between informational websites and books published online. If you disagree with my classification of the article 'The Tarnished Halo of Modernism,' then the citation on the 18th line on Page 4 should be underlined, not italicized.

"Happy Christmas!"

17:45: I'm trying to put the finishing touches on this terrible paper, but all I can hear is Shane, stomping and growling in the living room like Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

I emerge from my bedroom, looking wild myself. No time for a shower today. The poor cat is cowering under a chair, and the kid is on his knees, yelling at her through a little battery-powered megaphone. "Stop in the name of the law! In the name of God, come out from under the chair!"

He's only about 8, but he's making me laugh and then smiling at me in the same way a certain kind of guy does when he discovers he can get me to laugh. He's gonna be trouble someday.

The cat goes tearing into the kitchen, a streak of furry black irritation.