Coming out to my straight Irish friend in an European city center pub
We had already been together that February Friday night for at least two hours. Since I'm not much of a drinker, I had asked Andy to pick the first spot for our TGIF night together. He had selected an Irish pub in the city centre where we each had had at least one pint of Guinness: a proudly Irish drink. Because I've got social anxiety, I always plan ahead for my meetings with people that I'm not yet familiar with. So one of those pre-meditated questions which was also one of the first that I asked Andy at the pub was: "Did you grow up eating a lot of Irish potatoes" ? Surprisingly, his answer was yes! Yes, actually I was surprised as I'd expected that he'd answer in the negative because I've encountered a lot of scenarios where stereotypes of a place end up being far from the reality. Hence, I'd actually imagined that the popularity of that food (Irish potatoes) might fall into that basket of outdated stereotypes. Photo by Engin Akyurt from