iRony

It’s not a simple thing to teach the concept of irony to sixteen year olds at a struggling high school. I meet well-educated adults who aren’t able to wrap their heads around the idea. Still, I would try.

With a lesson on this complicated concept this early in the school year, though, I may have bitten off more than we all could chew. My first class on the topic did not hit home. I talked to a fellow teacher about it during common planning.

“What I do is play the Alanis Morissette song,” said Cara, a colleague who has one year of experience on me.

I have had a problem with this song since I first heard it. I was literally offended by the Canadian's crackerbarrel interpretation of my pet literary tool. What I found most disgusting about it was the fact that its popularity would cause a whole generation of pop music loving fans to misunderstand the definition of irony. I imagined my younger sisters (forced to rely on the radio as a role model due to my decision to live at college instead of at home) growing up thinking, “I was making an omelet and I dropped the eggs. Isn’t that ironic? Don’t you think?”

Who would even teach them how to make an omelet? Somehow, they made it through.

As far as the class went, I wasn‘t desperate yet, but another class like the previous one, and I would be. I found my copy of "Jagged Little Pill" and put it on my iPod touch.

In class I soldiered on. I announced, ”Alright, I’m going to play for you the corniest song in the world. You’re not going to believe that we used to listen to this crap. It was very popular about thirteen years ago. I mean, it was really popular. All over the place. MTV played it, and then played commercials that made fun of it. And you might make fun of it too. I did. Really, it’s the least cool song ever. But, it’s called ‘Ironic‘.”

As it played, I asked them to list things the song described, and we discussed why those things were or were not ironic. After third period, one student asked me to write down the artists’ name so he could find the song and put it on his own iPod. I wondered if he was being ironic.

After fourth period, I had to leave my classroom while another teacher taught a freshman health class in my space. This teacher had no control over his class. I would come back, and if the desks weren’t broken, they had been written on. I hid the speakers, put the iPod in my jacket along with my phone, and left to go to common planning, which was held in a large meeting room, Room 123.

Common planning ran late and when the bell rang, I left the room quickly. I didn’t realize until later that I had left my jacket in the room. The room was normally locked, so I didn't think it was very urgent. I waited until after school to retrieve it. When I got there, the jacket had been moved, and the pockets were empty. No phone. No iPod.

The next day I told my first few classes what had happened. I asked them to tell me what was ironic about my story.

“Aren’t you mad?”
“Of course I’m upset. Do you expect me to start yelling about it?”
“I’d be mad.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t any of you. You have a solid alibi.”
“So you want to know what’s alibi about it?”
“Ironic. Alibi is a story. Like an excuse that proves you weren’t at the scene of a crime. Ironic is…who can tell me?”
“It’s like when you being sarcastic.”
“Yes, that’s part of it, but that’s not the whole story.”
“That’s not the whole alibi?”
“Not exactly. Let’s talk about alibis in a few minutes. Let’s stick with irony now. What is ironic about the story I just told you?”
“Well, you took the iPod with you so it wouldn’t get stolen from this room, but it got stolen from the place you took it to.”

That is an example of the fourth best thing about being a teacher. The first is the benefits. The second is the summer months. The third is the large number of young females that become co-workers a yearly basis. And then comes the feeling of knowing that you can see the effects of your work helping people to get smarter and know more.

Not that that would bring back my fucking iPod Touch. Of course, I had brought that sweet piece of equipment to school in the first place so that I could teach my little darlings about irony. And for better or for worse, my students, if anyone cared to ask, would have one solid and unforgettable example of irony. So, I suppose, I had accomplished my goal.

Nine months later, I sat in the Denver International airport on a three-hour layover. My gate had no outlets, but I found one that did, plugged in, and finished writing a story that by this time you may have already read. Maybe you’ll read it next. You don’t have to go in order. While typing, I often look above my monitor to monitor my surroundings. I don't like to miss things.

Normally there is nothing to see anyway. But this time, I spotted a black video iPod on the ground near the next bank of seats. I saved my work, walked over and picked it up. 80 Gigs. If someone else had picked it up, they might not have done so with the benevolent intentions that I now had. I put it on the seat next to me so that when the owner inevitably came back to retrieve it, I could heroically show the worried traveler that I had found it and safely return it to her. Or him.

I resumed writing and looking around, but he or she never came back. Many people passed, and some people teased my by looking around in that area, but before a few seconds passed, each time, each person proved to be merely looking for a place to plug in too. A half hour passed and I wondered if there really would be any benefit to a lost and found at an airport. Its owner would now be 30,000 feet in the air and on his or her way to a place where iPods grew on trees.

The iPod told me that its name was Stacy’s iPod, and then it told me that she had eclectic and fantastic taste in music. She had Green Day and Tracy Chapman on that iPod, and I was just returning from a trip on which I saw each of those acts in concert. She had Sufjan Stevens, who I had always been curious about, and Me’shell N’dege Ocello, who I had forgotten about. She had 10.9 gigs still available, and the other 29 were taken up by mixes, including one specially for Volvo drivers, and one specially for women. She had three episodes of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, and three seasons of The Wire.

At this point it would be more accurate to say I had all these things. I would not try to find the lost and found, or the owner.

Once on my own plane and headed home, I saw that her contacts were mostly international, and that her calendar consisted of flight after flight, followed by daily reminders of what city she was scheduled to wake up in or travel to. There was no discernible home base, but she had clocks set for California, Amsterdam, and Melbourne. She kept track of birthdays, and would soon call make a call from Barcelona to a set of twins turning 47. At least, she probably would have done so if she had been more careful in Denver. I was certain, though, that Stacy would have all of this information backed up on her Macbook. She had International Talk Like A Pirate Day in her calendar, and that made me wish that I had met Stacy.

Not really, though, because if I had, she would have taken Stacy’s iPod back.

I had a simulacrum of Stacy’s life. I wanted Stacy’s life. I wanted to make her bi-weekly call to Stephanie. I wanted to go to the training session in San Diego and the sales conference in Brussels. Before Stacy’s video iPod fell near my lap, I had been happy with my two week trip to the Pacific Northwest and my replacement iPod. It was a Shuffle.

Stacy didn’t even watch movies. She had pod casts from The Economist, and took advice on how boomers should protect their retirement investments. Stacy would easily be able to replace her iPod and everything on it.

I wished that when I was younger, I had made the same careful choices Stacy had. She had worked hard and kept herself organized in college, had paid her dues, made her calls, and earned her place on the ladder. I could have been Stacy if I had had a mother like Stacy had had, who inculculated her with the value of savings and wise investments.

Stacy’s mom was not listed in her contacts. At least, she wasn’t listed as “Mom.” No Dad either. Perhaps her iCal was just for business. Perhaps they weren't close. After all, why would the twins’ birthdays be listed on a business calendar? Why didn’t Stacy have any photos? Why doesn’t Stacy have any appointments on any days, past or present, past 6 p.m. local time? Why is she spending Thanksgiving in Denmark?

Where are Stacy’s priorities, really? My parents showed me that what someone did when they went home was more important than what they did between their commutes. Why didn’t Stacy have a home? Why was she always commuting? Who the hell loses their iPod in the airport anyway? Why did she have 10.9 gigabytes left and why did she use none of it for photos of people that she cares about? Who cared about her? How many people had Stacy’s birthday on their iPods? Did Stephanie even look forward to those bi-weekly calls? I’ll bet she suffered through them then scoffed at them loudly with the co-workers in her Australian office as they all left a little early to get drinks and talk about things Stacy wished she was a part of.

I bet that Stacy had never taught anyone the definition of irony, and I was beginning to doubt whether she would even have been able to tell me what irony was. I would be able to teach her, if I were compelled to find her. She had lost her chance. I was compelled to find her for just a moment when I saw that she had Jagged Little Pill on her iPod.

Then I became sure that if I had found her to talk to her about irony, that Stacy would pretend to listen to me, and would then tell me irony was a black fly in her chardonnay. And soon after that, she would tell me that actually, she preferred shiraz. What she wouldn’t say is that she drank shiraz unapproached in hotel bar after hotel bar in cities she visited frequently enough that the bartenders would recognize her but would pretend not to so they could avoid the obligatory conversations that would come along with that type of acquaintanceship. I’ll bet all they wanted was Stacy’s tip. I wondered where she parks her Volvo.

And then I thought about the Touch. I wondered what had happened in that dark quiet room. It was supposed to have been locked. Had a student snuck out of class and into the room and found himself unexpectedly rewarded for his truancy? Or had it been a janitor who helped himself when he found his favorite secret break spot suddenly more interesting? Had he shuffled through my life? Had they liked the way I looked, smiling with my family at Thanksgiving? Had they bothered to find out what was on it, or had it gone straight to the fence?