Ye think ye know somebody

I’m not an undertaker, but I’m a wile man for putting people in boxes.

(And we’re off!)

After knowing somebody for spell, I reckon I have the measure of them.

I make the mistake of thinking that people are like places; things that can explored, charted and understood completely.

This, of course, is a load of dung.

Because, unlike the physical world, people always possess the potential to confound.

The term mind map, for example, is misleading. It’s almost an oxymoron.

Why? Because there is no mapping a mind. Not really, anyway.

Psychiatrists, I think, are more like theoretical physicists than they are ordinance surveyors. It’s best guesswork, conjecture and probabilities. Not that I have a notion about theoretical physics… But I am guessing you haven’t either.

From about the age of 12, I thought I had my aul boy all figured out.

I had gathered the data, entered it into the computer, and, until last week, the predictive model produced hadn’t really let me down.

It was basically this: Likes football, kung-fu films, boxing, cars, embroidery (think big machines, not grannies), riding his bicycle, looking at other people’s bicycles, the odd set of arms curls, all sweets, walking up hills, and, like any Irish da that is neither religious or mental, a good pint of stout.

Doesn’t like shopping centres, leaving the lights on, paying for Sky TV, Pat Kenny, most radio stations, and driving anywhere with a population of more than 70,000.

This pretty much sums up how I perceived the parameters of my da’s personality.

Some would argue they were a bit too tight to fully capture the totality of somebody’s being; id, ego, and superego. But, up until last week, it done the job.

Then, just as I was about to head out the door and into the town for the evening, he told me he didn’t like my jeans…

At first, I was confused. And I don’t mean slightly bamboozled, like one might be when thrown a tricky quiz question. I mean deeply and existentially perplexed. Like I imagine an acid-tripper might be his psychedelic ride was rocked by a vision of his own mother transfigure into a fire-breathing ladybird.

“Eh?” went the noise that seemed to emanate from my face.

“Jesus, I hate those jeans. I hate them. Everytime I see you leaving the house with them on I think to myself, where is he going?”

After about a year of bottling it up, the lid had just blown off and there was bile going everywhere.

By this point I had regained my senses and was beginning to come to terms with the fact my aul boy had an opinion on my jeans.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked, bemused but forced by the strength of his reaction to starting to doubt them myself now.

“Everything. The colour of them, everything.”

“Is it the baggy arse?” asked my ma, deciding the time was ripe to reveal she too was against them.

“Jesus Christ, you don’t like them either?” I said.

“Well, I was never too sure about them, but that I look at them, nah, I don’t.”

I felt like I had just been told I was the postman’s.

Betrayal mingled with the smell of bacon that still lingered from when only minutes ago we had eaten sandwiches as a family.

Indignant, now, I turned on the aul boy.

“Since when do you care about jeans? If she didn’t buy you jeans, you’d be running about in a pair of 1988 Wranglers and them cutting the guts off ye,” I said.

“They’re wile-looking,” he leveled coolly.

Nowhere in that blueprint had fashion ever figured.

But, like I said, people always reserve the potential to confound.

I’m a wile man for putting people in boxes – occassionall