Of all the things that could turn out to be unexpectedly athletic, the most surprising has got to be how the Irish have turned the kissing of a lucky stone into a bizarrely gymnastic experience. You probably aren’t even aware of this (we sure weren’t!), but if you want to kiss the Blarney Stone, you are going to have to work for it. I can only guess that the notoriously lithe people of Ireland assumed every luck seeker would be just as limber as they are, and fine with flopping around on the ground for a bit, in order to eventually kiss the stone from underneath like a fruit bat. I had planned to just quickly smooch the thing, maybe get a photo of me giving it a little tongue for extra luck, but this is not at all what they have in mind for you to do. You won’t realize this until after you’ve stood in the kissing line for over an hour, but what they expect you do is a lot more involved than just first base.

In fact, you are about to get to at least second base with the man who facilitates your kissing, because for some reason, the spot on the stone you are supposed to kiss is located on the UNDERSIDE of the Blarney Castle wall. This means that while kissing it might bring you untold luck in the future, getting at it might prove decidedly unlucky in the here and now. Hopefully you don’t have any physical ailments that prevent you from performing a light amount of contortion, or any qualms about doing this in front of a sizable crowd full of strangers, because this is what you’re about to do. You are going to lie down on your back and allow this random man to help slide you underneath this stone, and then tuck your upside-down face into this little crevice. Now it’s time to start your kissing, Spider-Man! This whole contrivance is beyond ridiculous— and I can honestly say— one of the weirder things I’ve ever done.

Sadly, me preparing you for what to expect probably isn’t very helpful anymore, because I can’t imagine this activity was allowed to continue during, or even after, the pandemic. (I couldn’t really believe it was happening at the time, honestly, and that was well before we even knew what a Covid-19 was...)

But now, in our new, post-Covid world, having a whole bunch of people line up to collectively kiss something lucky, one after the other, sounds like one of the unluckiest things you could possibly do.