steven o'flynn

steve and i have a healthy relationship, at least as far as i know. he calls me a yank but i know he does it because he likes me. he says it like it's supposed to be an insult but i know it's not, he's just taking the piss out of me.

that means to make fun of a person.

if we close together he gives me a ride home which is always welcome because in ireland it rains a lot and most times you are outside it is raining. since i have to be outside to walk home i usually end up getting rained on.

one particular day he gave me a ride home it had not been raining, it had been snowing. but snow in ireland doesn't stay for long and by the time we had finished up the snow had melted and froze again and made ice on the windshield of his car which was made worse by irish weather because it had decided, again, to rain.

being a canadian i knew this was easily fixed by the ice scraper that everyone keeps in the entrance of their houses for just such occasions like this. as an irishman he knew nothing of this practice, called me a yank and asked for the bottle of water at my feet because the whipper fluid wasn't working. i thought, for a moment, but only a moment, how he knew there was a bottle at my feet only to realize that my car would likely have had a bottle on the passenger side; not because i had remember putting it there but simply because passenger sides always have water bottles on the floor (check for yourself, but i know you know it's true).

he sprayed the water on the windshield and the ice began melting and in the same moment that i was thinking "wow, this is the greatest idea ever why didn't i think of that" he hit the whippers and i realized that it was also the worst idea ever. not because he didn't have those dumb canadian tire ice-muncher things that only work because the whole commercial is shot indoors but because he was now covered in icey-shush water that was much better off safely contained in the water bottle he was still holding.

in as many movements that he takes to make a trip around the bar he frantically grabbed for the switches, stop the cold from getting to him and will the past three seconds out of existence. in the car, covering my mouth and thinking unfunny thoughts i sat trying not to get fired for laughing hysterically at my boss.

laugh it up, yank. laugh hard. this is the only time you'll ever get to do this. so laugh good and hard.

for whole trip home the incident was my fault.