JimFormation

Danny returned from the restroom and counted heads. “One, two, three, four, five … oh shit.” He panicked. “Where is Seamus?”

Of his family, Danny is the only one who lives in the United States. Everyone else lives in Ireland.

His cousins, six strong, come to visit him once a year. The week they visit, Danny reports, is a week of severe anxiety and sleepless nights.

“I know it sounds funny,” Danny says. “But they are Irish through and through. They like to drink, they like their women, and they like to fight. Everything else is secondary.”

“When I take them out, I am forever counting heads. I can’t keep my eyes off of them. If one goes missing, he’s going to get in trouble. They’re like fucking kids.”

One evening, Danny took the cousins to the Bamboo Bar & Grill in Seaside. Danny went to the bathroom (“It was the quickest pee I ever took”) and came back to one missing, Seamus.

He scanned the bar to see Seamus across the room. He’s standing, leaning forward on a table, talking eye-to-eye with a pretty young lady. She smiling. He’s laying it on her thick, and she’s buying it.

“Now it’s like a movie in slow motion. I see the whole thing. I’m moving as fast as I can but I can’t get there; I can’t stop it.”

The girl’s boyfriend shows up. He’s not happy that Seamus is talking to his date.

“I’m just talking to the pretty lady,” Seamus said in his heavy Irish accent, now standing with his arms at his side.

The boyfriend is half a head taller than Seamus and squares off as to intimidate him. “Seamus gets that smile that scares the shit out of me,” Danny says. “I yell, ‘Nooooo!’” Too late.

Seamus steps backward slightly and then BAMM! Headbutts this poor sod right in the mouth. “Irish kiss.”

“The poor boyfriend drops like a rock. He’s out cold. Seamus turns to his cousins. His arms are spread wide and he’s smiling biggest shit-eating smile that you’ve ever seen. Like he was saying, ‘Did you see what I just did?’ Blood was running down his face from where the kid’s tooth impacted his forehead. Pig in shit, Jim. Pig in shit.”

Danny got there at the same time as the bouncers. Seamus was ready for them, so were the cousins.

“Don’t do it,” Danny begged the bouncers. “You don’t understand. They live for this. They want this. They don’t care if they spend the night in jail. It’s just another story that they’ll take home to their friends. Please, just let me take them home.”

The bouncers believed Danny and ushered the cousins out the back door.

“That was last year, Jim. They’ll be back in a month and I’m already losing sleep.”