Right is Left is Right is Wrong and Lucky

From 06 October 2008 (posted 17 March 2019)

So, before I delve into this lovely Irish story on St. Patrick’s Day 2019, I believe some backstory is a bit necessary to understand what is going on here…

There’s that movie The Wedding Singer where Adam Sandler tries to win Drew Barrymore by singing a love song on an airplane helped along by Billy Idol and the cabin crew. Yeah... Anyway, when they are fleshing out their plan, Idol does a fist pump and shouts “Right!” For some reason, my cousin and I thought that part was nothing short of hysterical in our younger days and has since then been a bit of an inside joke. Turning to the right? Responding to a correct answer? Any time it needed to be said, we would fist pump like Idol and shout, “Right!”

I also need to admit that I sometimes confuse my left and right. Yes, I do the whole ‘left makes an L’ thing with my hands. Still. We were driving in Ireland, where driving on the left side of the road only confused matters more. Last bit of info is about Beth. Love her more than anything and she is super talented in very, very many things… but navigating maps just isn’t always one of those things.

Between the two of us, it’s a wonder we’ve ever made it anywhere.

Now that you’re caught up…

We were driving through the tiny rural roads of the Irish countryside in our snazzy Nissan Micra on the border of counties Galway and Clare, taking the scenic back roads from the town of Kinvarra toward The Burren. We were coming up to a “T” intersection and I needed to know which way to go.

“Left or right?” I asked.

“Right,” said Beth. “Or maybe left. I don’t know!” She turned the road atlas around in circles (yes, this story predates Google maps on the phone, you whipper-snappers).

“Ummm….” We sat at the intersection for a minute or two.

“Right!” she exclaimed.

“Right?”

“Right!”

*Billy Idol fist pump* “RIGHT!”

I turned left.

“No! Right! Go back the other way!” Beth said, laughing hysterically. “You even said RIGHT!”

I needed to turn around, but the roads are really curvy and narrow, and the speed limit is really fast. We had to find a good place to pull off to make it work. We continued going the wrong way for a good bit until we came to a smaller intersection. I figured we could turn around here and get going back the right way.

But hold on a second…

In front of us was this old monastery, completely in ruins. There was a large tower standing well over where the roof once was that was leaning hard to one side. Cows were roaming through the field around it, looking at us like we were some kind of aliens who just beamed down. We were seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and it was amazing!

We pulled over and got out to explore. There was a little cemetery full of Irish crosses, and Beth loves old little cemeteries. I know this is going to sound cliché Ireland, but the grass was just so brilliant green. We wandered around, getting pictures, looking at the crumbling building and imagining what it must have looked like back in the day. Kilmacdugah Abbey it was called (or so we learned later though research). We crossed the street and hopped over the stone wall and just wandered around the abbey grounds. We walked a bit through a field when Beth called out in excitement. I turned to look, and she was bent down picking something off the ground. She was beaming when she came up and showed me what she had found.

There, on this old holy ground, in the beautiful Irish countryside, while on our honeymoon – she found a giant four-leaf clover!

It was like the Emerald Isle itself was blessing our marriage and bidding us the luck of the Irish in all of our future adventures. Ten years later and we are still adventuring, still exploring new places both in travels and in our own lives. Luck of the Irish indeed!

We eventually got back in the car, made that turn around, and headed the right way down the road to get where we were going. It really is amazing though, sometimes the simplest thing like a wrong turn at an intersection can completely change your life. Over a decade later and we still remember this day, enough to share with you here, and all was found by accidentally turning left instead of right.

If you make a wrong turn in your life, don’t be afraid to see where it leads you. Maybe it’s an adventure even better than what you had planned!