Alanis Morrisette had it all wrong. It isn't like a black fly in your Chardonnay, and it isn't like rain on your wedding day. Those are just examples of crappy luck. As Mo Rocca once explained on VH1's I Love the '90s, rain on your wedding day would only be ironic if, say, you deliberately moved your wedding to Phoenix from Seattle in an effort to avoid the rain, and then it rained anyway. That's irony. However, as Mo pointed out, it is quite ironic that there's a song called "Ironic" that isn't, in fact, ironic.
As far as pop-culture irony definitions go, Mo's is the best I've heard. I didn't find this explanation from Reality Bites helpful at all:
Ethan Hawke (as Troy Dyer): It's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning.
Angie Lucas: Huh?
For a more reliable definition that was not written by Ben Stiller or the geniuses over at VH1, check out the eight options at dictionary.com. But I think the following adventure story provides the perfect illustration of irony. Hang in there; it's a doozy.
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Chapter 1: Three years ago, while vacationing in Capitol Reef National Park, we decided to take a scenic drive through Cathedral Valley. (It's just as beautiful as it sounds.) To get there, we had to briefly ford a river. Luckily, we were in the sturdy Nissan Titan pictured above, with my husband Travis at the wheel and me in the navigator's seat. Our highly inadequate, hand-drawn map said we were supposed to drive a "short distance" in the river bed, then take a sharp left onto the next part of the trail. As we passed by what I thought was the road, I said, "Hey is that our turn?"
"Naah," said Travis. And so we kept going.
In mere seconds, I simultaneously felt and heard a distinct "klunk, klunk" as we drove off a short ledge. The water began to rise, and I could see it seeping in beneath the driver's side door. I gripped the door handle, white-knuckled and stammering, while 10-year-old Jeremy prayed in the back seat. Travis calmly threw it into reverse and started backing up against the current. I looked behind me and saw water pouring over the top of the tailgate. I was on the edge of panic, picturing us grasping the top of a drowned truck a mile downriver, waiting for rescue...when I felt the tires grip the terrain. We zoomed back up that ledge. Hallelujah! We were not going to be swept away! And that's the moment we struck the submerged tree.
Chapter 2: Three weeks ago, I was driving the truck to St. Marks Hospital to spend the day with my sister-in-law, who's battling breast cancer. Because we had been procrastinating the submerged-tree repair for three years, the rear bumper on the passenger side still proudly sported the battle scars from our river adventure. While I waited patiently at a stoplight in the freezing weather, a braless woman in a tanktop and pajama pants drove her compact car right into the driver's side of the bumper, giving us a matching dent on the driver's side. We contacted her insurance and our insurance, deciding to have both repairs done at once. And, after a day in the body shop, the old Titan was good as new.
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Chapter 3: Last week, Travis left a message on my phone that said, "You're never going to believe this. Call me as soon as you can." I called. A woman (fully clothed, as far as I know) rear-ended our poor truck in a restaurant parking lot, causing nearly identical damage as our original collision with the submerged tree. The damage is hard to see in this picture, but it's the best I could do, being an amateur collision photographer and all. So it's back to that same body shop to have the bumper, body, wheel well, and muffler fixed. Again. Isn't it ironic? Yes, I really do think.
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p.s. The creature you see reflected in the bumper above is not some poor defenseless dead animal; it's our lazy dog, Ruby, who's soaking up the sun on one of the first warm days of the season. No, she's not angry. That's just how her face looks.
