We are studying irony in
class right now. We have actually been
witnessing irony happening right before our eyes.
For example, there is a
substitute who is a former teacher at our school. Last year his three-year contractual position
ended. We figured he’d move on to
greener pastures, but he hangs around and hangs around and hangs around. A few weeks ago he just appeared sitting at a
student desk while I was teaching. I
announced to the class, “Dude, you’re like a cockroach. Every time I turn on the lights, there you
are.” I was using this sub as an example
of irony recently when all of a sudden he appeared, yet again, in my class.
In this one exchange, the
class got to see all three kinds of irony in action: Verbal irony because we were talking about
him and … BOOM … there he was; Situational irony because we didn’t really want
him there nor need him there and … BOOM … there he was for no good reason (he
was supposed to be teaching another class in another wing of the building) the exact
minute we spoke his name; Dramatic irony because we were all in on the joke and
he wasn’t, like the audience being aware of something of which the character
himself is ignorant.
Somehow this same class
got talking about the flu shot, and one of my students proudly announced, “I
NEVER get the flu. I’m never sick!” The next day?
Absent. Reason? Sick.
Irony.
The best one has to be the
approaching Thanksgiving, though. For
once, I am not cooking. I’m going to a
restaurant, one that’s not close to my house but an hour’s drive away. I decide that this is the year I will not be
sitting in my house cooking my arse off only to forget to wrap up leftovers and
desserts for people, ending up with way too much food and way too many pounds
attaching themselves to my hips. Yup,
this is the year I’ll go out and let someone else cook and clean and pack up
leftovers.
Get ready for it; here it
comes -- It … is … supposed ... to …
snow … on … Thanksgiving.
From the sounds of it, the
atmosphere just might drop a Nor’Easter on us.
Now, I’ve made fun of the weather people a lot. I am constantly tattling on them for their
histrionics and their Doomsday forecasts, and then we get nothing, or next to
nothing.
Watch us get nailed with
snow Thanksgiving afternoon so I can’t get to my dinner reservations.
You know it’s going to
happen. You know this kind of stuff only
happens to me. You know if Mother Nature
and the meteorologists can all get together and kick me in the proverbial rear-end,
they’re going to do it.
It’s okay, though. I’ll just use it as another one of my
teachable moments. How ironic would that
be?
