Life is indeed full of irony, which refers to things that contradict each other. Irony could also refer to a Chinese laundry worker who can washee and irony. A case in point occurred the other day while I was shopping. I happened to notice that a certain brand of bottled spring water exclaimed in attention getting letters on the label, "With Fluoride". To me, this is the pinnacle of irony. I thought people drank bottled "spring" water to avoid various chemicals that are added to our tap water. It was also ironic that I was in the soft drink section to start with since I gave up drinking carbonated beverages some time ago. Incidentally, I could never figure out why people pay high prices for bottled water in those pop bottle size bottles. This makes about as much sense as buying snow at the height of a snowstorm. I have never nor will ever buy those little bottles of "spring" water. Well, the only possible exception to this is that if I were stranded in the desert and dying of thirst I might. With my luck, the bottled water vendor would only take Diner's Club credit cards and I would no doubt be out of cash anyway. Talk about even more irony, I've seen people run out of bottled "spring" water at meetings and then refill the bottle from a drinking fountain! I have always been skeptical that the bottled water actually contains spring water in the first place. Did you ever wonder with one spring how they could possibly fill thousands of 8 and 16-ounce bottles? Since there are no federal standards for bottled water that I'm aware of, I have long suspected that they just fill the bottles with tap water and laugh all the way to the bank.

 

Another irony is that every ATM machine has Braille. I wonder how in the world could a blind person know where to put their ATM card since the slots are so high and how would they know if the amount was right? Thus far, I have not seen any bills with Braille on them. In addition, all elevators have Braille, but some don't have it for each floor button. It's conceivable that in a tall building that a blind person could keep pressing buttons and ride up and down indefinitely. Besides, how would they know which floor to get off? I think these examples are typical examples of Federal ADA laws gone amok. Of course, we all know that the Feds have never made sense and are indeed the benchmark of irony. I would hasten to add here that my wife is handicapped and we are thankful for the majority of ADA regulations that do exist and make sense. Take the military for example. How about the term "Military Intelligence". Now there's a classic example of irony. I could go on and on about the military, but the whole point of this account is to relate examples of irony while I was a kid. I sure wouldn't want to ramble on and on off the subject. Perish the thought!

 

Whenever I have ever gone to the bank and write a check for cash, the bank requires that I endorse my own check. Ironic as far as I'm concerned. (I just had to add one more adult example here).

 

When were in our early teens and not driving yet, Tim and I used to hitchhike quite a bit. Our mother never liked us to do that, but the ironic part is that she would never take us anywhere we wanted to go so we were forced to hitchhike long distances. Most of the time we hitchhiked to school or about 9 miles to Norwalk to get a haircut which was ironic in itself since at that time there were 3 barbers in Berlin Heights. On other occasions, we hitchhiked to Norwalk just to get a cream stick from Meek's Pastry Shop. If you have never had one of those, it was worth the 18 mile round trip! Now that I can drive to Norwalk, ironically, Meeks has been out of business for several years, probably about the same time as I started driving 42 years ago.

 

Another example of irony was that when Tim and I started smoking at age 13, of course our parents got really upset if they caught us or if they discovered any of their cigarettes missing. The ironic thing of it was that they always kept loose cigarettes in open containers all over the place the whole time! Tim and I were always baffled when they confronted us about missing cigarettes since they both chain-smoked and we figured they wouldn't miss 1 or 2 of them.  On the other hand, they probably didn't notice, but confronted us since they knew we were taking them anyway and that was supposed to prevent us from doing it any longer. Ironically, as you may have guessed, it didn't in the least prevent us. Sometimes our father would "cuff" us and when we asked what for, he said, "General principles". I assume that was for all the things he didn't know we were doing (and there were plenty), and those that he knew about (like sneaking cigarettes).

 

In our early teens, we hung out in "The Roost", an old chicken house that we fixed up. Plastered all over the walls were pornographic pictures of scantily clad women. We got them from Playboy magazines our friends stoled from their fathers. We never stoled any from our father since he had a much better hiding place than the other fathers did. In those days, porn was pictures of women in scanty bikinis and not the totally unclad ones these days. Ironically, even though our father knew they were there, he never made us take them down. Maybe he was relieved that we had pictures of scantily clad girls and not guys.

 

When I was very young, I used to walk in a "splayed" manner, i.e. when I walked my feet turned outward about 15 degrees, just the opposite of "pigeon toed". My parents got me dress shoes with a specially shaped heel that straightened up my feet as I walked. I'm sure they were very expensive and put a dent in our meager farm income. Ironically, I rarely wore them and ran around in tennis shoes and boots with regular heels 95% of the time, yet they never made me wear them. Even today I'm still slightly "splay footed" which is probably the cause of  my body and head bobbing up and down slightly when I walk. Those of you who have seen me walk are familiar with this. It is indeed very distinctive.

 

When we were kids, our parents insisted that we "eat right" and take care of our bodies. Ironically, they destroyed their bodies by excessive smoking and drinking. I guess that was another example of the "Do as I say, not what I do", which was the standard behavior of parents in the 1950's. As a result of seeing the effects of this attitude, I have always stuck to my high standards and rather then lowering myself to other people's behavior, I always make them come up to mine. An example of this is that when I see guys that rarely if ever use profanity, they will suddenly start doing it in the presence of other guys that do. I have found that I never use profanity in the presence of others who do, in most cases I notice that they either stop it or cut it down a lot.  The same goes for those who use improper grammar.  Hence, just 2 examples of making others come up to my standards rather than me lowering myself to theirs. TOOOOOOT TOOOOOT (That's just me blowing me own horn) J Hey, I realize that I'm far from perfect and rarely get a chance to hear what my horn sounds like!!!

 

One of the ultimate ironies is that when I was a kid, I got D's and F's in writing. Look at me now; a "Gifted" prolific writer! TOOOOT TOOOOT – WOW! That's the most I've heard my own horn in a very LONG time!

 

Now, perhaps some of you may be wondering what I consider the Final Irony. Well, the very fact you have wasted your valuable time reading this story says it all... TOOOOT TOOOOT J J J