A lot goes on in the giddy days and nights leading up to Christmas Day, particularly if you’re young or single, or pretending to be either or maybe pretending to be both.
There’s so many parties, so much mistletoe and that looming deadline of New Year’s Eve makes everybody that bit more approachable.
Had you seen me clipping down Dublin’s O’Connell St around that time of year, you’d have said to yourself, possibly in a prohibition style gangster voice, “Say, here comes a Yuletide honey now. That girl sure is ready for Kissmas”
Well... Cool accent but you’re wrong. I was actually rushing along, squinting against the icy wind, trying to get to the cinema in time to see Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2. That was my big hurry on December 22nd, a vampire wolf teen romance, on my own.
I passed the nativity scene by the spire, fenced in by chicken wire on a traffic island, just like it was in old Bethlehem. Most of the major players were represented: Mary, Joseph, the donkey, but Jesus wasn’t born yet so they all gazed with fixed adoration into an empty crib. A baby due in a few days but Mary still wasn’t showing: a Christmas miracle.
Across the street lying face down on the dirty, frozen footpath was a large red haired man. Like everyone around me, I slowed down but kept walking. These were my thoughts upon seeing him, in order that I thought them:
1. I’ve never done a first aid course.
2. I could try to help but what if he wakes up and punches me?
3. I don’t want to miss the part where the adult wolf falls in love with a vampire baby. I’m already late and I still have to buy Malteasers because cinema snacks are so overpriced.
4. What if that man is dead?
5. What if there are cameras and they play footage on the news of me running past a dead man’s body to get to the cinema?
That last one stopped me cold. I could see the headlines already: “Sad woman ignores dead man at Christmas to go see Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 on her own’
I ran back, knelt beside the man and said “Excuse me mister” loudly. Nothing.
I looked down at him; his tracksuit was much too small, his face and hands were dirty in that ‘I’ve gotten used to it’ way. He smelled like cider and the city.
I took off my mittens and pressed his wrist, looking for a pulse and I couldn’t feel one. Then I pressed my own wrist and couldn’t feel a pulse there either.
A man carrying a large Lidl shopping bag came and knelt beside me and said “Ze ambulance are coming. I called them.”
I asked him if the man was dead. “No,” he said. “See how he is warm and breathing. He’s breathing very heavily.”
I did a little laugh, as if I’d made a joke that he didn’t get. Then I told the French man that I had to go – I was meeting someone.
Before I had a chance to leave, an old man, wild-eyed with a high-pitched voice came hobbling over and said “What’s that? Is he dead?”
He began poking at the unconscious man with his walking stick.
I said, “Hardly. He’s warm and he’s breathing, quite heavily actually.”
The French man added, “Do not worry madam, the ambulance is coming, I called them.”
The thing was the old man was androgynous looking. Not in a sulky he/she model kind of way, more like a light beard as well as a large bosom kind of way.
Fortunately, the busty old man didn’t notice the mix up. He was too distracted by the other man’s accent.
“Ah listen to you! We call you Froggies.”
The French man missed the slur, but unfortunately enquired after it. “I’m sorry madam; you’re speaking a little too fast.”
Realising suddenly that he had been mistaken for a woman, the old mad was irate. “Madam? You’re calling me madam? Are you blind Froggie? I’m no madam.”
Confusion fell over le bon samaritan. “Uh excuse me madam?”
“I am a fella and you’re a blind froggie so you are.”
The French man looked at me beseechingly at me for a translation, so I said as kindly as I could manage, “This is a man, not a woman. He says you are a blind frog, a frog who cannot see.”
I covered my eyes and did a hopping motion to illustrate the point. The French man apologised and said he was indeed a blind frog.
The old man softened, “It’s alright. Everyone thinks I’m a girl, it’s because of me hair.”
My eyes were drawn once more to his chest, but I hate when guys do that to me, so I looked him in the eye and I said, “Yeah, that must be it.”
And so we stood there, the three wise men reluctantly taking care of our giant hammered baby Jesus asleep on the road.
Eventually the medics arrived and shone a torch into the fallen man’s eyes. As he stared, one of them asked, “Where were you going before you fell over?”
He came to, dazzled by the torch and the Christmas lights twinkling over head, and said, in just about the saddest voice I’d ever heard, “Home, I was going home.”
My heart finally, and correctly, went out to him.
“Where is home?” asked the medic.
Everyone leaned in, waiting, and the man said “Ah, it’s Egypt, where do you think?”
We all exhaled and the medic replied, “Oh fabulous, I hear Egypt is lovely this time of year.”
I walked away as the stacked old man claimed the Lidl shopping bag is his and the French man politely described its contents to a policeman to prove ownership.
As I crossed the street to the cinema, I believe I heard him mention fennel.
