Lessons on being catty, part 2

More about our weekend in Kilkenny and the various characters that we met on and off the stage. No complaints except for the "life coaches" that we met who tried to get us to sign up to a €23,000 weekend (that is like, $30,000) which is going to teach us how to live in the moment. "The power of now", Carpe Diem. Shite. What a wacko. They were some of these Tony Quinn disciples. The strangest thing about these types is that they are the saddest, most desperate people who have this unsettling urgency in their eyes as if they are drowning, as if they are just hanging on ... and they are trying to convince me they have the secret of life and the key to everlasting happiness. Again, at the risk of repeating myself - Shite.

One of the reasons that meeting this pair really has stuck in my mind, besides the fact that they wasted and hour of our time (thank Christ for the beer garden and my huge, dark sunglasses that make me look like a bug - I could catch a couple much needed zzzzzz's), is that people can get so lost they will cling to anything. I was half hoping that with age brought wisdom but I look around me and it seems that sad young people are just becoming sadder older people. Apparently the oncoming of years are not bringing on any solace, peace of mind or epiphanies about the life. The secret isn't revealed. We just get older.

Whoa! What a bummer! And it doesn't stop there. One of the guys, the one that was less of a zealot and somewhat bearable, lost his phone during his night out. I heard this story the next day (they were staying in our hotel and I made the mistake of going to breakfast). How did he lose his glasses? A girl comes up to him and asks if she could borrow his phone to call her friend but she can't hear inside the bar so she has to walk out into the street with it. I guess she kept walking because he never saw her again.

Here is the summary of Lessons on being Catty #2:

• With age does not come wisdom
• Beware false prophets

If the girl that took that poor shnook's phone reads this (snowball and hell come to mind) give that guy back his phone!

If we "do no harm" perhaps we have a change to age gracefully with a little dignity.