Knowing the definition of irony is required before reading this column. Ready? OK. Hold on to your dictionaries.
Irony is stalking me around every corner. And that's no small thing when you're trying to live - as the trendsetters say - your "best life." You're loving, you're caring, you're giving, you're successful. But irony is lurking. It's ready to pounce on your "best life" at any moment. Ah!
How to avoid it? Well, we could avoid turning any corners. OK, OK. That's totally unreasonable. Our planet is round, but somehow, our world is full of right angles. How'd that happen? Must have been those "flat-earthers" in the Dark Ages.
Now let's get back to our stalker. Just when you are feeling really good about your "best self," irony rears its ugly head and turns it all to mush. Your good deeds do more harm than good. You put in extra work and someone else gets the credit. You take your vacation in a place with 360 days of sunshine and you get the other five. Ugh!
And on and on and on. Irony just never lets up. It just keeps coming at you. Coming at you. And worst yet, it always comes out of the blue. Oh, great. Now we have to avoid the color blue and corners! Plus, blue is my favorite color! We just can't win. When you're on top of the world, irony will soon be on top of you. Ouch!
What to do? Well, we decided we can't avoid corners. So that's out. And we're avoiding the color blue, so we can't come out during the day. Wow, this is really getting tough! Hey, I've got an idea. How about if we just go on the offensive? How about if we stalked irony instead of it stalking us? Yeah, that's it. Let's give it a piece of its own medicine. And we know exactly where to find it - around every corner. And there are billions of those things! Whenever irony is just about to turn a corner, we're there waiting – BAM! WHAM! Toast.
I'm so glad I fleshed this out with you. From now on, we go on the offensive. We meet irony where it lives. WHAM! BAM! Done!
Whew! I'm glad that's over. Now, we can go back to our "best life" and even "better selves" and get all the living we so richly deserve and have counted on our whole "best lives."
But what about irony? Isn't it still lurking? Well, I suppose so. But if we stay on the offensive we're sure to prevail.
Follow me and irony goes back to where it belongs. A place where no one will ever find it. Yes, that place. The dictionary.
How ironic.
- Bill Barre of Hinsdale is a contributing columnist. Readers can email him at [email protected].
