Adaptation: Normalizing the Abnormal
or The Children of the Troubles
This article is dedicated to The Children of The Troubles who didn’t get to grow up.
Audio version: Adaptation: Normalizing the Abnormal
We were living in England because my dad was hired as a project superintendent to build three churches in the British Isles. One church in Bradford, one church in Birmingham and one church in Bangor, Northern Ireland. When a church was finished we move to the next location.
I got used to starting over every year. Make friends, leave friends, make friends, leave friends. We were in England and Ireland from 1973 to 1976. It was a period in history known as The Troubles, so, in addition to the normality of moving every year, I got used to bomb scares.
The way bombing campaigns worked most of the time was like this: a call was made to the location giving everyone enough time to evacuate. The police and bomb teams would try to find and disarm it.
In November of 1974 we lived in Birmingham and my dad was building cabinets and tables while they decided on the fate of the second church. One Friday night, my parents had the rare opportunity to go on a date. They went to the movies in downtown Birmingham and midway through there was a bomb scare. The moviegoers waited outside while the building was cleared, then they all returned and finished the film.
A week later, the next Friday night, two bombs were detonated and the call to evacuate didn’t happen in time. Twenty one people were killed and 182 injured. The fallout and miscarriage of justice became the subject of the movie, In the Name of the Father, starring Daniel Day Lewis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_pub_bombings
I remember a bomb scare during the animated movie Oliver Twist. We had vouchers to come back, but the movie theater was bombed. I don’t remember the exact timing, but I found an article of Fire bombs in Birmingham movie theaters on July 31, 1974. https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-31071974-fire-bombs-birmingham-cinemas
It was a dangerous and uncertain time.
What I’m writing about this week is normalizing abnormal behavior. Like the gun story (Negotiating with a Crazy Person), in a short period of time I got so used to carrying a gun, that being without it became uncomfortable. Carrying a gun was my new normal.
Living in England and Ireland during The Troubles is another example of how I adapted. Two years after the bomb scare at the play (Discerning Instincts from Anxiety), two years of bomb scares in all sorts of locations: school, the market, the movies. Two years later it was normal.
Evolutionarily, the better we are at adapting, the better chances we have for survival, but it’s equally important to recognize that it doesn’t have to stay that way. Sure we can adapt, but we should also strive to get back to sanity.
To illustrate adaptation, here’s a glimpse into my mind as an eight year old, whose normal life now included armed guards at the grocery store.
Bangor, Northern Ireland 1975
A line of people wait to get into the grocery store (think Trader Joes during Covid)
Inside the entrance, armed guards stand on one side of a long table. As people file in, the guards rifle through their belongings. Purses are checked, everyone’s pockets are emptied, baby carriages, aka prams, are inspected. The search is methodical, comprehensive and sweeping.
My mom pushes my baby sister in a pram. The rest of us, ages 2, 4, 6 and 8, trail behind her.
My mom hands over her purse. The guard inspects it, then hands it back. She picks up my baby sister from the pram. The guard pulls up the mattress, moves around the blankets and then nods. We’re now cleared to shop for food.
This scenario repeats week after week. Finally, I’m annoyed enough to say something.
“Mom, why do you have to take out the baby? She was sleeping!”
“Because they want to make sure no one brings a bomb into the store,” she says.
“Sure, but they can see that there’s a baby in the pram. They don’t need to keep waking her up” I say.
Having 5 kids in a war zone must have been frightening. The evidence was everywhere. Bomb scares weren’t idle threats. Remnants of buildings were part of the scenery.
Mom takes a deep breath, “it’s in case someone puts a bomb under the mattress.”
I’m confused. “Do they put a doll on top of the bomb and tell them it’s sleeping and try to sneak in that way?”
She shakes her head, “no, sweetie.”
“You mean people put bombs under real babies?” I ask.
I suppose she thought it was best to tell me the truth. “I know it doesn’t make any sense and it’s hard to understand, but it’s happened before.”
My jaw drops. I feel sick. I look around me and see shoppers with baby carriages. “Do they kill their own baby or do they steal someone else’s?” I ask.
Mom can tell my line of questioning wasn’t going to end anytime soon. “Hold your sister’s hand. You’re partners today.”
Walking around the store that day something shifted in me. Everyone became a suspect. I purposely walked up to every baby carriage, said hi to the baby, and visually checked their bedding for suspicious lumps under the blankets. If there was a baby to save, I was going to be the one to do it. The shock of this revelation had caused me to completely forget that the guards had already screened everyone.
With my new vigilant ‘suspect everyone of hiding a bomb’ attitude, I began to wonder. The guards always check everyone coming into the store. Purses, pockets, prams. I wonder, if I bring my purse to the store, if they will check me too, or will they assume, because I’m a kid, I’m innocent?
I decided to test them. We went to the grocery store every Saturday. That gave me a week to prepare.
My purse was made of fabric with a cross body strap. This of course looked really cool and it prevented it from being snatched away – you know, if someone is going to mug you and take your purse, they will have a harder time getting it if you wear it this way. My dad told me this. I’m not sure why a purse thief would want a kids purse. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to lose my pen and paper I kept handy.
I decided to put extra things in my purse to make it obvious that there was ‘something’ inside. And of course, I couldn’t draw attention to myself. I would have to act like an innocent kid shopping with her family. My goal was to get through the bomb screening process without having my purse checked.
Week #1
Saturday morning I was nervous. Had I stuffed my purse too full? It was hard to zip closed. I removed a few items, but left enough to make it look suspicious.
Mom parked the car, we unload. Mom gets the pram, puts my little sister inside and we take our place in the screening line.
My purse is on top of my coat. I guess I could’ve put my purse on then my coat, but I’d be relying on them to notice a bulge at the side of my coat. No, I was going to make it obvious. I have a purse, they check all purses, and therefore they should check my purse.
Two tall men with guns stand at the entrance to the store. They’re matching. Matching pants, matching shoes, matching belts, sweaters and hats. Even their guns matched. My boring school uniform was more interesting than that.
The guard smiles at me.
Smile and wave. Smile and wave.
I can feel my face turning red. Dang it. I need to act cool. I’m pretending that I’m hiding something and testing them to see how good they are. Will they view me as a suspect? They should. Because even if kids aren’t bad enough to bring a bomb in their purse, I reasoned that parents who blow up prams could easily make their kids bring in bombs.
“Please take out the baby,” he says to my mom.
She lifts my sister out of the pram. He rummages quickly through and straightens out the blankets so she can put her back. She hands him her purse. They’ve done this before. It’s routine. They’re almost done, so I start walking slowly into the store, staying close to mom, but clearly going into the store before they’ve given us permission. Giving them every chance to say, ‘Wee lassy, I’ll be checking yer purse now.’
I gently swing my purse by my side. Are they going to notice? The guard looks at me, smiles, waves, and turns his attention to the next shopper.
I did it! I made it into the store and I could be carrying a bomb right now! I did it! They failed my test! I was elated for a moment, then realized that if I made it in, then other kids could too. I immediately felt unsafe.
In an instant, my motive changed. Guards should be checking kids too. I decided to somehow make the guard realize they were overlooking an entire demographic.
With the next Saturday rapidly approaching I considered my options. I could fill up my purse so it’s bulging or take a bigger bag. I asked mom for an old purse but she didn’t have one.
I settle on looking suspicious. This time, I’m going to act like I’m hiding something. When they look at me, I’ll avoid eye contact and put my purse behind my back. My mom catches me on this every time. She says, “What’s behind your back Sidse?” Then I’m caught. The guards must be at least as astute as my mom.
Week #2
It’s Friday night and I can’t sleep. My mind’s in overdrive. I wonder if they’ll interrogate me after they check my purse. ‘Why ye acting suspicious, lass? Why ye hiding yer purse?!’
I know, I’ll tell them that I don’t have anything to hide, but I’m nervous because of their guns. Yeah, they’ll believe that.
As we approach the screening line, I pay close attention to the cement sidewalk under my feet. I don’t want to accidentally step on a crack and have something bad happen like a broken back.
Inside the store, my baby sister is sitting up in the pram and playing with her plastic doll by chewing on its hand and drooling on the white dress.
The guard smirks and asks her if the doll tastes good. I looked him over. Maybe I should ask him if he likes shooting people. He’ll probably tell me it’s the favorite part of his job and then point his gun at me.
As if he can hear me thinking, he looks directly at me. My eyes instantly widen. I try to make them normal size, but instead I squint. I’m not sure if soldiers know how to read minds so I desperately try to think of something else.
“Are you okay?” asks mom.
My heart’s racing, “Of course, I’m okay, don’t I look okay, I mean, I do look okay. don’t I?”
Mom stares at me, but before she can say anything, the guard says, “Ma’am”. She hands him her purse and they are both distracted for a few moments.
Whew, now I can compose myself. I had it all planned out, then I had to wonder if he likes shooting people. Now I hope he doesn’t notice my purse and I’ll get through the security without being screened. If they want to see the purse now, I don’t know how I’ll explain all the toilet paper. Could I fake a runny nose? Sniff. Sniff. Cough. Mom doesn’t bat an eye. She must have some radar that goes off when her kids are sick and this wasn’t passing. Or she’s hard of hearing. Or she’s…
“Okay, let's go,” she says. We’ve been cleared to enter the store.
I look back at the guard to see if he’s going to stop me; to see if he noticed my purse, my bulging purse that I wish I could hide under my coat; to see if he’s going to say, “excuse me lass, but we didn’t check yer purse.” I half expected him to have his gun drawn on me for daring to enter the store with an unscreened bag. Instead he said, “Ma’am?”, and the woman behind us handed him her bag and he proceeded to verify she wasn’t going to blow up the store.
He wasn’t even looking in my direction. Wow! What security! I’m going to have to up the ante next time and make them notice me. This was important stuff.
Week #3
I slept soundly and woke up clear headed. During the previous week an idea came to me that was so profound all I could do was sit in awe at the brilliance of it. I had a plan. It was full proof. There was no way they wouldn’t notice me this time.
Before we left, I removed the extra toilet paper from my purse. My nose wasn’t running and I didn’t want to fake it. No, this was straight business. My dollying around in front of the guards looking like a cute innocent eight almost nine year old were over. They were about to become aware of something they’d been missing for possibly years. I wondered if they’d give me a medal? After all, no one else bothered to think about the possibility that young children could be bomb carriers.
Again I watched the cement under my feet and again made sure I didn’t step on a crack – for safety sake. I’ve heard that there is this thing that happens to the earth, the streets crack open and people fall in the holes, and sometimes it’s so far down that they can’t reach them. And a crack in the sidewalk could be an easy place for the ground to open up and I didn’t want to get swallowed up by the earth. Not now and not ever.
“Ma’am.” My mom hands the guard her purse and he quickly looks through it. She picks up the baby. He rummages for a bomb. The same routine.
I look down at my purse and unzip it quickly before I lose my nerve.
“Ma’am?”
The guard is moving on before he should. I have to stop him. He’s obviously going to pass by this learning opportunity unless I step in.
I clear my throat. “Excuse me?” I say.
His light brown hair was shaped in awkward curls on top of his head. I bet he’d taken a shower and put his hat on before his hair was dry, but I wasn’t going to point that out to him. I step up to the table, open my purse and set it down right in front of him. In case he didn’t get the point, I added, “don’t you need to check MY purse?”
Honestly, I expected him to be blown over at the profoundness of my question. I imagined his mind racing back in time to all the children he’d let pass without a bit of scrutiny.
Instead, he asks me, “do ye have a bomb in yer purse?”
I was aghast. How could he think I had a bomb in my purse?! And how bold to just come right out and ask someone if they’re carrying a bomb. Of course I’m not carrying a bomb, but that’s not the point. The point is that you don’t know who could be carrying a bomb and you must thus check everyone, even the ones you would never suspect.
“No,” I say, blushing.
He smiles at me the way you smile at something you find amusing and moves on to the next shopper, “Ma’am?”
To write this article, I researched facts, ran things past my parents for accuracy and looked at my life at the time. I learned a few new things:
First, my mom had the same question I did. Why do they make you take the baby out of the pram? An Irish woman had told her prams were used to hide bombs. In 1972, three years before we arrived in Northern Ireland, a bomb was hidden in a pram in Belfast. When it exploded it made a crater in the street. Fortunately, no children were killed. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/25/archives/babycarriage-bomb-injures-3-in-belfast.html
I also learned that I wasn’t the only one thinking kids could carry bombs. Apparently, so did the IRA.
In the PhD Thesis: Children as Political Bodies: Concepts, Cases and Theories, by Helen Brocklehurts, she writes about the many ways children were used during the war. Here are a few excerpts:
A directive to IRA members makes this clear: “Youngsters and older children are ideal material for the work of planting bombs and rigging booby-traps...They attract less attention and suspicion than adults, are sensitive to rewards, and ask no questions. If captured by the British army or security officers they are unable to give any information about their employer...More gelignite nail-bombs and petrol bombs must be readily available.” The directive continues: British Army patrols can be lured into ambushes more easily when children, youngsters and women are the bait.”
Contrary to what I thought, thirteen miles away from where we lived, children in Belfast were regularly searched for bombs.
“It was not until 1972 that very young children were bag-and-body searched on entering a store, and the army regularly searched schoolchildren’s bags, as well as prams, knowing that they could contain gelignite.” https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/children/brocklehurst/brocklehurst99.htm
This article is dedicated to the children of Northern Ireland who didn’t get to grow up. https://www.amazon.com/Children-Troubles-Joe-Duffy/dp/1473697352
Sidse, as your mom, I really appreciate your writing at all times, but especially when you record family events. These stories from our time in Britain and Northern Ireland brought back a lot of memories. I especially remember you feeling snubbed during the inspections entering the grocery store and the day you insisted on having them check your handbag.
I remember going to dinner one night at a little restaurant in the basement of a store and reading the next day or so of a disastrous bombing in a similarly situated restaurant. The bomb turned the tables and everything in the small space into projectiles.
We were very blessed in all of our doings while we lived there. I never take those blessings for granted.
Keep writing- you’re very goid at it. Not just my parental pride speaking, but I do a lot of reading and I recognize quality when I see/ it.
👏👏♥️♥️
Indelible! BTW "In the Name Of the Father" is on my top ten movie list of all time. Keep writing Sidse!