Irony

As a follow up to yesterday’s post – Numbers – the little red car with the 188881 odometer reading apparently didn’t care to be written about on this page. It whined in protest nearly all the way to the dealership where we were picking up the car undergoing repairs. At one point, the better half suggested leaving the thing in a parking lot and taking an Uber to the dealership.

Long story short, the little red car was replaced by an even smaller gray car with considerably fewer miles on it. Looks like I might have to monetize my blog to help pay for it.

And that, my friends, is irony.

We are surrounded by irony.

Irony is the stuff of O’Henry stories – for that matter, many short stories make their mark because of irony. Same with some novels.

Sorting through some of my book collection so I can make a donation to a worthy cause (An AAUW Book Sale – proceeds to help sponsor a scholarship for a young woman to attend a women’s college in Missouri) I ran across The End of the Road by Tom Bodett. The book follows people in a small Alaska fishing town at “The end of the road” with a series of vignettes which end up tying together as the reader progresses throught the novel. My favorite scenario in the book has to do with a pair of couples, very good and close friends, who are just out of town enjoying time in a sauna, and then running out of the sauna naked as jaybirds in the snow to cool off before going back in to sweat it out in the sauna again.

One of the friends inadvertently locked the door of the sauna behind them. The sauna burned down and they had no recourse other than to strap on their skis and head to town before hypothermia set in. When they got to the road, they flagged down the first car they saw – driven by the prudish preacher’s wife – piling in when she stopped.

That was, indeed, irony.

Another notable piece of irony popped up in yesterday’s news. Texas’ Attorney General reportedly ran out his back door when a process server came to his front door to deliver a subpoena. The irony there is that the state’s lead attorney would avoid being served a subpoena, seeing as how he has had issued more than his share. Add to that the fact that the same state attorney general has been under indictment for most, if not all of the time he has been the attorney general. And he’s running for reelection.

The irony just oozes. And he’s not the only official with questionable backgrounds or motives. While officials from both parties can lay claim to having been involved in skullduggery, it seems as if most of those officials have a little (R) behind their names.

And from what I have observed over the years, politicians with the little (R) behind their names seem to lack the ability to understand the concept of irony… as do many of their followers.

The January 6th Commission hearings happen live tomorrow. The hearing room will be oozing with irony.

Be Seeing You!

(In another irony, it will now be noted that we have a red, or scarlet vehicle and a gray vehicle. Scarlet and Grey being Ohio State University’s school colors. I attended Ohio University. Green and white. And there was a time when we were first married, that our vehicles were green and white!)