I’m enjoying a wonderful semester at the Academy with a batch of truly talented students. In their first assignment, I asked them to define “irony” in their own words and offer up an original example of it (i.e. not from Wikipedia, and not from a misguided Alanis Morrissette song. FYI – “rain on your wedding day” is not ironic, it’s merely unfortunate, you silly Canadian!)
Anyway, a super talented student by the name of BJ Kingery has granted me permission to share his inspired response (below) with lovers of irony of everywhere…
“Irony is defined as consisting of, containing, or resembling iron. A good example of something consisting of iron is a cast iron skillet. The skillet is made out of iron because iron is easy to get, dispenses heat in itself very equally, and is inexpensive to shape into skillets. The skillets are also made out of one solid piece of iron, making them extremely irony. An example of something containing iron is the surface of Mars. Mars is red because of the amount of iron oxide in its surface. Since Mars is characterized by its redness, and therefore its amount of iron, Mars can be said to be irony. Usually the taste of blood is likened to a penny, or it’s called coppery, but the flavor of blood is much richer than the flavor of a penny due to the iron in our blood. Blood resembles the taste of iron, making it irony. While all of these things are irony, the real irony here is how you expected me to define irony as pertaining to comedy, and instead I defined irony as pertaining to the metal (interesting fact, if I had just written this paper without you asking me to describe irony, this paragraph would not be ironic, but since you expected one definition, but received a different one, it is ironic.)”
How can I possibly give this up? I was supposed to stop teaching after last semester though, not quite ready to leave the classroom, opted to cut back instead. Admittedly, it’s getting harder to juggle academia with the ever growing demands (and deadlines!!!) of my writing and filmmaking career, festival travels and some exciting new developments coming up in the next few months.
But, again, I ask – how can I possibly give this up? My delightful students are making it awfully challenging to let go. I thank them for this! I just hope they learn half as much from me as I constantly learn from them.