An exercise in ironic education

I was explaining to my class the difference between coincidence and the over- and mis-used word, “irony.”

“It is coincidence, not irony, when you meet an old friend on the street outside the building where you both went to school,” I lectured. “Irony is when a vegetarian is eaten by wolves.”

I gave an insufferable professorial smirk and prepared myself to bow to the applause I was sure would follow. It was the fourth week I’ve taught a three-hour creative non-fiction writing class to graduate students at Point Park University in downtown Pittsburgh.

But there was no applause. No appreciative nods.

Later on the drive home I figured out why.

Because from January through May, this group of polite young adults had signed on to bear witness to one of the world’s most colossal ironies -- me teaching anybody how to succeed in writing.

This is the third time Point Park has flattered me by offering me this adjunct position and I think I figured out why. I am to journalism students what a human cadaver is to medical students.

Prospective journalists can examine me, my flaws and failings, and try and forensically determine what killed my career.

Was it god-given laziness? Massive stupidity? The jigsaw puzzle of career scars leaves ample opportunity for dissection.

Really, I probably make a better professor of writing than I do a practioner of writing. And it’s a lot more fun to get paid for talking about failed assignments than it is to not get paid for failing assignments.

I’ve noticed that the students come alive with interest when I tell them stories about how I’ve cratered once-thriving magazines with my questionable ethics, sloppy fact-checking, or reckless and exorbitant expense account sprees.

True story: Details magazine in 1999 closed four days after I’d submitted a $5,450 reimbursement bill for a five-day frolic I enjoyed while on assignment to cover a mundane TV programming convention in New Orleans. I got paid, but the magazine didn’t recover to publish another issue until 2002.

But students stare out the window like Gitmo detainees whenever I tell a story about a rare career accomplishment from long, long ago when I used to have them.

Worse, is the reaction I inevitably get when I read them some of my own work as I inevitably do.

I just can’t help myself. They are truly a captive audience. Again, the Gitmo detainee analogy is apt. I’m like the righteous Army chaplain who preaches to fanatical Muslims about the everlasting importance of being good Christians.

It’s worse for my students than it is even for my poor wife and children. Family face no repercussions when they leave the room or shove their fingers in their ears when I launch into another rambling story.

Getting up and leaving isn’t an option for my students. I could fail them for that. I do wonder if by week six some of the weaker students might crack and agree to submit to waterboarding if it’ll get me to shut the hell up.

I might enjoy that quid pro quo, too. Besides being a bore, I also have a mean streak that makes Dick Cheney seem mirthful.

Again, ironies abound. Just last night I spent about two hours talking about the importance of, get this, being concise!

Yes, I went on and on and on about why they need to be brief. I read them long passages from Hemingway and lectured ad nauseam that the only way to get ahead in writing is to write less.

To stress the point, I even assigned them dainty little 150-word essays in praise of something brief with no sentences longer 15 words each.

In hindsight, I suppose it would have been funny if I’d have told them to make the brief essays no less than 2,500 words.

Then there's this: The lengthy lesson about the importance of being brief was given by a man prone to wearing boxers.

How ironic.

Ban straws! They, er, suck!

I’m convinced I could construct a built-to-scale Kiddieland sort of Gitmo with all the unused straws that have passed through my hands on their way to the godforsaken landfill.

I’ve never understood the custom of restaurants handing out scores of straws to able-bodied people with at least one working arm. Yet, guaranteed, sometime in the next day or so I’ll be eating out at a family restaurant and the overworked/undertipped waitress is going to bring me and my squad four drinks and four straws.

The first thing that’s going to happen, decorum be damned, is that both kids (and likely my wife, too) are going to peel one end off the wasteful little paper condom holding the straw and shoot the missile directly at my eyeballs.

Then, while gleefully chuckling at my girlish squeals, they will set the straws down on their placemats and pick up the drinks with their hands.

Once the girls outgrew their sippy cups, they had the sufficient motor skills to pick up a drink with only the occasional little spill. The girls may one day need training bras, but no child needs a bridge device between sippy and adult cups.

So that always gnaws at me, not to mention leaves me all twitchy whenever the waitress brings the drinks.

But that’s not the worst of it. That’ll happen when I’ll be in some tavern and order a soul-soothing Jack Daniel’s on ice.

I would never desecrate a Jack with Coke or some other soda. I drink my bourbon straight.

That means it defies logic that it would need stirring. Still, guaranteed, it’ll come with a little red straw. Sometimes two.

Heck, even the heathens who order mixed drinks understand that gravity alone can achieve a suitable mix between liquids. I stare cold-eyed around the bar at all those wasteful little straws and wish I had a license to kill like that renown environmentalist James Bond. He insisted his dry martini be, “Shaken, not stirred.” I can’t imagine a straw ever touching his lips.

And instead of stirring, I stew.

“What’s the deal with all the *&$#@ straws?” I fume. “The only thing more unnecessary than an adult drink with a straw is a mute button on the remotes down at the school for the deaf.”

I instigate so many crackpot crusades (vanity zip codes to reduce federal deficit, edible newspapers to save daily journalism, etc.) that I’m loath to launch another one.

That’s why I was happy to see a giant entertainment complex is taking the lead.

Singapore Airlines called me straight out the blue (get it?) and asked me to do a story for their inflight magazine about the world’s must-visit theme parks.

Of course, the opportunist in me was thrilled. This could lead to bigger gigs with this prestigious publication (doubtful). And the crabby malcontent in me was circumspect. With a December 23 deadline, this could disrupt my last minute holiday plans (a certainty).

Still, I couldn’t pass it up.

My internet research led me to Ocean Park in Hong Kong. It’s a wonderland of rides, marine and zoo exhibits and looks perfect for my editiorial needs. But that’s not what really got me revved up.

What did was a pop-up that said in English, “Come visit us on No Straw Mondays!” They see straws as disgraceful inadvertent litter and are phasing them out.

I was thrilled and momentarily thought about jumping on a carbon-devouring monster jet and zooming clear around the world just to thank them for their environmental sensitivity.

Further research -- I told you this would disrupt my holiday -- revealed Sea World in Orlando has banished straws altogether. I doubt the place is now stained with spills although, really, at Sea World how could anyone tell?

I feel a righteous fire to spread the anti-straw gospel. I hope you’ll join me in a movement to remove this ridiculous waste from our drinking landscape.

I know I can count on you because people like me and you are like James Bond in at least one respect:

We don’t suck.