At first glance it seems that other than the accent, and the odd penchant for potatoes, there is not much difference between American and Irish society. The fact of the matter is that Ireland is very different from the States. One such difference is the Irish sense of humor.
One of my Irish flat-mates described the Irish sense of humor better than I ever could. He said “any Irishman could stand up to a judge and say that his head is blue, without even making a face.” If you couldn’t guess by that description the Irish are definitely not sarcastic at all. They also hate Guinness, and love the English. Running in tandem with the Irish love for sarcasm is a phrase called “slagging.” Slagging can take several forms, from playful teasing, making someone feel intentionally uncomfortable, to pulling a devilish prank on them. And my God do the Irish love to prank. They like pulling pranks more than Angelina Jolie likes adopting entire third world countries. This love of dastardly pranks holds especially true for drunken male college students with nothing better to do on a Monday night. One such prank that I had the privilege to witness is a called the “three-man lift.”
The three-man lift entails convincing some poor unsuspecting soul that by using the biomechanics of the human body, it is indeed possible for one man to easily lift three others. The unwitting victim then lies down on the ground, with two people on either side of him interlocking both their arms and legs with his. Once the center person is fully secured the fourth person, who is supposedly going to lift all three of the people on the ground, takes off his pants. As the nature of what is really going on dawns on the person in the middle, their face changes from that of intrigued curiosity to sheer terror. The fourth person, who is now in nothing but his boxers, proceeds to sit on the face on the victim. Since the victim has their arms and legs locked up by the people on either side of him, he is completely helpless to his fate.
Following this rather entertaining event, one of my Irish flat-mates asks if anyone had not played the game spoons. I spoke up, and said that I had never played it. Now, let me put something straight here. I knew full well that this was going to be some kind of a prank, because the conversation had gone from the topic of the three-man lift to some Irish game I had never heard of. You would have to be as smart as the guy who designed JFK's car without a roof to think that spoons would not be a prank. But, being the only American in a room full of boisterous, drunk, male Irish college students, I thought that participating in spoons would be a good way to earn their respect.
The game started with my flat-mate John and I squaring off, each of us with metal spoons in our mouths. We then took turns leaning forward to face the ground, so that the other person could use the spoon to hit their opponent on the head. The object of the game was to hit the other person on the head so hard that they would give up, a feat which seemed relatively hard considering the way in which we were holding our spoons. I went first, causing only a tiny ping on the top of John’s head. It was then my turn to tilt my head forward, so I obliged. WHACK! An unusually hard smack hit my head. I figured that either John took more steroids than Mark McGwire, or someone else hit me with the spoon. I looked around…but no one else had a spoon, so I continued the game. This happened several more times, and I even went so far as to jump to try and hit John harder – an act which was met by massive amounts of laughter from the surrounding Irish. After one particularly hard smack it finally hits me – an idea, not another spoon - so I stood straight up and turned directly around. Sure enough there was a rather large Irishman, doing a poor job at concealing a spoon in his hand. At this the entire room erupted in laughter, and I received several hearty slaps on the back from those who had prank me. At that moment I was accepted as one of “the guys.”
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