Define Irony

Last week the discussion group in my Hebrew class got started talking about irony in Biblical narrative.

Ironically, this is not the point of this posting...unless you count irony as a point.

Allow me to explain, because I think I even managed to confuse myself there.

I was attempting to make a witty introduction to something that I found somewhat ironic that happened yesterday, and admittedly I made a pretty poor showing.

Please have grace for me...we are Lutherans after all.

I was enjoying my normal Sunday afternoon rest time yesterday (sabbath...I am a fan). Amazingly, for the second day in a row, both kids were actually sleeping. This NEVER happens. If we get one nap out of my son (the older of the two) in a weekend, we are doing pretty well. However, yesterday he had actually konked out as well.

My wife and I were laying around being lazy, when all of the sudden I heard very heavy footsteps clunking up onto my front deck to the door, and then a half second later the doorbell clanged at least twice. Of course, it seemed extraordinarily loud.

My wife answered the door to find that we were receiving hand-delivery of our census survey.

I don't recall receiving the 2000 survey in a hand delivery, though I was still in college at the time. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since that time. Maybe it was hand delivered...although I don't think so.

Anyway...here's ironic situation #1. The lady delivering the letter had an accent. I can't even place the accent. It might have been eastern European, but don't quote me on that. Honestly I couldn't place it. Somehow, receiving the US census survey from an immigrant struck me as ironic. But don't get me wrong, not ironic in a bad way. Honestly, I think it speaks to the greatness of the USA that our government offers opportunities to all.

Go USA...you rock my face.

Speaking of the survey, I didn't do it right away, because of course the loud doorbell as well as the lady's abnormally loud voice woke the kids up, and they both came trucking out of their rooms pretty quickly. The short one came out just in time to see the census lady walking down the street to the next house.

Side note...it was cold yesterday...I hope she didn't have a very large area of deliveries to make.

Fast forward a few hours until the kiddies went to bed, and I filled out the survey before tackling homework. Here we find ourselves approaching ironic situation #2.

It occurred to me that I was filling out the census information the day after my big community context paper was due for RTA. One of the aspects we looked at in terms of community context was changes in the demographics of the community between censuses. As the 2010 data is not yet available (obvious considered the activity I was currently partaking in), we utilized the information from 1990 and 2000. Only 10 years outdated, but hey, you use what's available to you. Somehow, I think that section would have been more applicable in about 6 months or a year, but that's just me.

Long story short...as I was filling it out, a movie quote went through my head. Harnessing my inner Adam Sandler...

Information that would have been helpful YESTERDAY!!!!!

Perhaps I'm the only person that will appreciate the irony of the a fore mentioned situations. If so, I can live with that.