This is the one that may or may not be ironic.

Posted May 26th, 2010 by Mike Lawson

I blame Alanis Morissette.

Maybe I was sick the day we learned this in 9th grade English, but I’ve never really completely understood “irony.”  Well, I do get it.  But I’m not exactly comfortable saying “that is ironic” versus “that is a funny coincidence.”  I do know that a traffic jam when you’re already late isn’t ironic, but actually just poor-planning on your part.

So on Sunday I was eating lunch with my buddy Jeremy and our conversation included, among other things, two things that would seem unrelated: my previous job working for a test-prep company and people who climb Mount Kilmanjaro.

When I was talking about my job as an SAT tutor, I was saying how miserable my life was.  I hated walking into expensive houses and tutoring kids that drove cars nicer than my own.  And I especially disliked that the services we offered were inaccessible to children that couldn’t afford the hefty $100/hour price tag.

Jeremy pointed out that the kids were doing the work.  It wasn’t like they paid me to take the test for them.  True.

Our conversation moved on to other things…including a brief discussion on a man who liked to throw pies in the faces of the women he is copulating and how it’s a difficult fetish to live out.

And we eventually moved on to Mount Kilmanjaro.  Jeremy has a friend that climbed it, and my old boss from the test-prep company took a month off and went to Africa to climb it.

And here’s what may or may not be irony: my boss had to, as most people do, pay a group of guides to get him safely to the summit.  He paid a lot.  The guy who ran a company that charged a lot to get kids to reach a high score on a test had to pay a lot to get himself to a high point on a mountain.

Again, Jeremy pointed out that the hikers in most cases were doing the actually work.  Most people don’t pay to get dragged up the mountain.  But that’s ironic, right?  Right?

But a “no smoking” sign on your cigarette break?  Come on…how long have you worked there?  Shouldn’t you know where the designated smoking areas are?