Before ever getting there, in the weeks leading up to our trip, I was starting to have honest-to-goodness nightmares about Ireland. Or rather, specifically nightmares about trying to drive our rental car on the "wrong" side of the road for the first time.

I tried to solve this anxiety by finding some place here in America that would let us practice first, in cars with the steering wheels on the other side. I was even imagining that maybe it would be like a fully realized theme-park, for people getting ready to travel abroad, with a quaint little Irish or English township set up, and we could drive down the cobble stone streets on the opposite side and get the hang of it all. Maybe actor/pedestrians would pop out of nowhere and you'd have to try not to hit them, as they said stereotypical things like, "Top of the morning to ya!" and "If you ask for a traditional Irish breakfast, we're about to cook you something so large and complicated that it's going to take about an hour to make, and another hour for you to eat!"

And as you swerved to miss them you could yell back in kind, "Yes, but will it inexplicably always involve baked beans? The sort we only ever eat on 4th of July?" And then you'll realize that maybe 4th of July is still a sore subject for them, the British at least, and you should probably avoid mentioning that when actually abroad.

So see, you could learn cultural awareness at this little theme park too. The problem I found, of course, was that such a theme park doesn't exist, not in Dallas or anywhere else. I told my friend about my nightmares (and also the lack in the Dallas market of UK-themed drivers education amusement parks), and she started having them too. She even started having waking panic attacks! Which is totally understandable, especially since she's the one we agreed would actually be doing the driving.

I told her not to worry, that we would find some secluded, BACKCOUNTRY DIRT ROAD where she could practice, and we wouldn't begin our road trip in earnest until she'd mastered it. Or at least felt marginally comfortable.

Well, as you might have guessed, the problem with that little pipe dream is that the rental car handoff doesn't happen on a backcountry dirt road, it happens at the DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. I feel panicky and like I'm about to get in a wreck when I'm driving at any airport, much less one whit all the streets and signs reversed. At least they speak English here, I remember thinking, so we'll be able to communicate with the paramedics as they pry us out from underneath our Ford LeafClover, or whatever it was we had rented.

I was still a drinker at this point, but we were determined to attempt this initial foray into flipped-side driving completely sober. (Even though we'd heard the Irish did it differently...ba dum dum, ching!).

Heather developed her own technique that I'm going to call Cry-Driving, whereas I started feeling like I was going to pass out, and I realized that I'd been holding my breath for about the past 5 minutes. Drivers at the airport are in a hurry, very unforgiving, and they were forcing us with their horns to drive at top speed through an inherently confusing maze of turnpikes and exits. Every second felt like it was destined to be our last. When Heather started merging onto the highway, I think I finally did black out.

We exited the highway the very first chance we got, pulled over, got out of the car, and both emphatically agreed that we would be returning the car and using taxis for the entire rest of our stay in Ireland.

We ended up keeping the car. Once we got back in and started the engine, it dawned on us that, fuck: in order to return the car, we would have to drive right back into the nightmare we just narrowly escaped, to get it back to the goddamn airport!

Fuck that, we're keeping it. We'll just figure this out. Or... Heather will.

"Siri, find Liquor Stores Near Me. Avoid highways."

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Don't stop here! While you've got the rental car, let's explore MORE OF IRELAND!