The Road Not Taken

The moments that changed everything. Five LIFE writers look at their own slidingdoors scenarios

Iwas in a towel when I came to the fork in the road. I had just got out of the swimming pool at Garda Training College when my phone rang. That call revealed two clear paths ahead of me and there, half-naked, dripping in chlorinated water and smelling of Herbal Essences, I started down the road that has led me to writing this article.

The first time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I think I was six, and I think I answered: “A twin”. That hope was shattered immediately and I became the youngest child in the world to know what a zygote was.

What did I want to be?

I threw out options and had them criticised by anyone in earshot. Painting pasta shells and sticking them onto plates would not give me the security I needed, apparently. Being a professional rounders player, ditto. Nothing I wanted was right, until the day my mam got stopped for speeding on the N20.

I was terrified watching her blush as she apologised for going at 68 miles an hour in a 60 zone. Then the guard saw me, saw I was terrified, and so to calm me, he explained why speed limits are important, and how people have to keep the rules or I could get knocked down and killed. It made total sense and I have never felt more protected by a stranger. That was it. I wanted to be a guard.

Of course the criticisms came — I was too ‘everything’ to be a guard, according to the school career-guidance teacher, who seemed to believe that every girl in my class should become a primary school teacher. One day I heard about the role of Garda Commissioner, and I decided I wanted to be the first female one. That was the first time I expressed a desire for my future self that was met with eyebrow-raises and head-nodding — expressions that say, ‘this kid has notions but she might just do it’.

I was on my path.

STEFANIE PREISSNER ‘I have never felt more protected by a stranger. That was it. I wanted to be a guard’

An Garda Siochana wasn’t taking in new trainees when I was coming to the end of my school years, but through a friend I secured a period of work experience.

When I arrived to my digs beside the college, I knew I had found ‘my people’. I was already dressed like the Garda trainees. Girls and lads with O’Neill’s tracksuit pants and gear bags chatted in groups like we were at a grown-up Irish college. I hung on the edges, as I always do, hoping to make a friend but too terrified to try. One of the lads introduced himself, recognising me as the kid on work experience. He told me my first class the following morning was Professional Competence One, and invited me to get dinner with a group of ‘phase ones’.

Later, I got into my single bed, stomach full of curry chips, and imagined my future life as the head of the police force.

You know those movies about the childhoods of sports stars? You see the moment Tiger Woods took his first swing of a gold club, and you understand there was no other path for him? Well that’s what this scene is in the movie of my life. The echoes and foxtrots of the Garda phoenetic alphabet sat comfortably in my mouth. I was well able for the physical side of things; my Irish was already better than some of the phase two students.

There was one element I struggled with. The other students were able to sound impartial and apolitical. I wondered if I’d missed a class where the United Nations came and taught diplomacy. My eyebrows wiggle across my face revealing my judgments and opinions. My voice goes up a notch when I’m on my high horse. Maybe it’s the altitude. Maybe it’s the conviction of my superior morals interfering with my voice box.

You can’t have sassy eyebrows and a wobbly voice if you want to be the Garda Commissioner.

My eyebrows are not the reason I am not the Garda Commissioner.

Two weeks in, after one of the PE classes, a theatre director I had worked with rang me to say they were doing a production of a new Enda Walsh play, and asked if I’d take a role. I didn’t want to say no. I loved youth theatre and felt at home with the drama kids.

I printed my script in the Garda Training College office, packed my bags and left. I swore I’d come back and start the training as soon as the acting dried up.

And here I am.

I still dream about being Garda Commissioner. I like to think I’d be kind and fair. And then I remember what I’m like any time I have to be the banker in Monopoly. I’m like the tiniest emperor ruling over the most minor province. The Monopoly banker is the smallest amount of power a civilian can have, and I ruin entire evenings with my stringent rules and blatant disregard for discretion or human error.

As a guard, I could have been brilliant, or I could have spent my days boomeranging to minor grievances, hell-bent on getting people to stop littering. I’d probably have followed a bratty 10-year-old with a chocolate wrapper miles out of my district, furiously taking notes on his progress, letting my career, or a drug cartel, slip by in the process.

I spent so much time building up the image of my life as a guard that my writing career sometimes feels like it’s drawn on baking paper and layered over the much stronger image.

I’m glad I took this path, but sometimes I do pine for my alternate life.

If I were a garda, I’d have a pension, maternity leave, and a job I don’t have to make sound more legitimate when I talk to my elderly relatives.

What I got instead of permanence, power and a pension was the ability to make my messy, irresponsible 20s last well into to my 40s.

I’m not sure if I’d be happier, but litterbugs would definitely have met their match.