A Wrinkly Couple from Lurgan—the town with the classroom and wide eyes—met us in baggage claim. They were quiet like hills with these huge, kind eyes that stared out at us beneath their caps. I was in a group of ten from college. They call college ‘university’ over there, but I kept forgetting. The Wrinkly Couple and I nestled like spoons in the front seat of a growling van, and I tenuously anticipated death the entire ride through the Republic. I was used to thinking Bono was very brave for having grown up amidst the broken glass and cobblestones, and I remember being moved to anger by the Cranberries singing about how much it sucked. But I also remember wondering why it was so bad if there were tiny leprechauns running around. I tell you, though: no glass, no leprechauns. It was like Thomas Kincaid saccharine outside my window. I was exhausted, so none of my conversation moved past noun identification. As we drove past fields I’d blurt out, ‘oh sheep’ and then wait for one of them to chuckle appreciatively. We continued our routine until I saw a stone steeple and sighed, ‘oh, that church is beautiful.’ The Wrinkly Couple bit their lips and glanced at me drooling into my window. ‘Church’ is a Protestant term, and we were deep in Catholic territory where the street names were written both in English and Gaelic and where they worshiped Christ in ‘chapels.’ I remembered Bono and the cobblestones and felt ashamed for not having known better. The sin of uttering the wrong combination of letters in the wrong combination of circumstances was, at best, damning.