Ask Uncle Larry

Dear Larry,
I have been off work for the summer holidays and am dreading returning after the break. I am really fed up teaching young children. They are so silly and always doing stupid things. It is just not fair, I feel like screaming Larry. I cannot take another year of it. I am waking up at night in cold sweats, shaking and having nightmares of meeting the new junior infants class with their demonic eyes staring at me knowing that they will crack me with all their psychological torture, the screaming, the crying, the fighting, the destruction of my property, scratching my car. Last year’s class drove me crazy Larry I can’t take it anymore.
Gerry.

Dear Gerry,
Sounds like you’re in bad shape. See that’s what long holidays and a soft job can do to a man. I have no pity whatsoever for you or your likes. Some of us don’t get a holiday at all and the rest of the country has to do with four or five weeks. You have nine weeks at summer, two at Christmas, another two at Easter, mid terms, in-service days. Sure ye spend nearly half the time on holidays and a secure pensionable job at ya where you would probably have to shoot a few of the junior infants class to get sacked. Stop your whinging now like a good little ladeen and get on with it or take early retirement: you have a cheek bothering this column with your aul shite.
Larry.

Scraped through the Leavin'

Well done to Mike Fitzgerald, son of popular local couple Bridie and Mick Fitzgerald, on passing his leavin’ cert. Sure he’s the first in that family to pass it, the rest of them failed it in style. Fair play though the odds were against Mike from the start because it certainly wasn’t from Mike senior or Bridie he got the brains. But sure when all’s said and done what good is a pass in the leavin’ these days with young wans going around with eight A1’s at them, eight A1’s at them and they can hardly string two decent words of conversation together, full to the feckin’ neck with education. Sure they’ll probably end up as doctors, consultants, vets or senior civil servants: at least they’ll never need any social skills in those jobs.
Anyway Mike Fitz was out celebrating his pass in style. Fluthered, out of his mind above in Pa’s on Wednesday night, no one had the heart to ask him which university he was going to. Sure what harm is there in a few pints, it’s the drugs that are the killer.
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Bobby Daly's Leaving Do

Well there was a grand turn out for Bobby last Saturday night and there was a few women there very upset with the news he was headin’ to Thailand. Bridie Hanratty confided in Maggie McGudgen that she might have made a move on him if she knew he had ‘leavin’ in the head.’ It’s a cautionary tale, sure there’s far too many people wandering around this village in first gear like they’re waiting for a certain alignment of the planets or something to get them going. Its no rehearsal folks, let ye go for it and take the bull by the horns.

Marx: The Elephant in the Room?

Dear Larry,
Do you think is Marx still the elephant in the room?
Joey Carroll

Dear Joey,
I think I remember seeing a film about that one time but I think the elephant was in a bowl of soup or something. Apparently that Marx lad was a bit of a big awkward lout alright. The thing is Joey, elephants are afraid of mice so I’m just wondering if there was a mouse in the room also, and if there’s a mouse you can be sure there’s a trap somewhere and some cheese. And then of course what sort of a room is it and if God is everywhere then presumably he’s in the room also. But that Marx lad had no time for God. Apparently he used to say that going to mass was as good as takin’ drugs - he never went to one of Fr. Fiachra’s masses or he’d have a different story. Our local philosopher and intellectual Wally ‘the wart’ Walsh was tellin’ me that Marx was a drab enough aul character and wanted us all to live in a ‘classless society’. Well living in a place that has no class might have been good enough for him but he’s welcome to his depressing outlook.
So Paddy if he’s still hanging around in any rooms, then describing him as a big, depressing, grey, awkward lump is spot on. He wouldn’t be the partying sort and from what I hear his followers are about as exciting. They’d have a distinct tendency as Myles McPartlin puts it ‘to be lost up their own …’
Best of luck.
Larry.
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