Irony

I tried to teach my students about irony and some of them still didn't get it. Here's an example that I didn't tell them that may have been the clearest of all:

I was doing this podcast with a friend of mine, and on it I used my real name and said some mildly controversial stuff. My mother, also a teacher, had a conniption fit and told me "If I didn't remove it from the world wide web, I'd never get a teaching job, or else they'd (the students) find out later and crucify me over it." She's a little dramatic.

After days of contacting the archiving website and looking at programming text baffled, and trying to remember logins and usernames and passwords, my podcast buddy and I finally managed to remove ourselves from the internet. It took emailing a girl named Amber at the website and pleading with her to remove my racy podcast so my teenage students wouldn't find it. She sympathized.

Fast forward to a month into the school year, and a colleague of mine corners me in the hallway:

HIM: Hey, I got a proposition for you.
ME: Um...sure, OK.
HIM: You ever heard of a podcast?

Long story short, he wanted me to be the official "writer" for the show, meaning I would "make fliers to put on windshields." What is this? Electioneering in Idaho circa 1943? I told him the best way to spread the word would be to use the same medium as the podcast - the internet, moron! Email the shit out of your friends, coworkers, college buddies, family! I don't think it sank in. He still wanted those car windshield fliers.

So now I'm trying to come up with an excuse as to why I can't make it to the inaugural podcast recording this Saturday at his house. I'm just not into it anymore. He's gonna be kvetching about teaching, when I just started a few months ago. I'm not that bitter yet. I'd rather talk about male screaming and Jewish rappers.

And this concludes your lesson in irony. (You're probably still confused, just like my students.)