Life is full of irony, such as tough pansies
Ann Cannon
Get it?
I pointed at the sign and asked my son a question.
"What's that an example of?"
Without missing A BEAT he answered in (bored) tones.
"Irony."
Kid was in the fifth grade at the time. Fifth grade! I was impressed that he'd already wrapped his brain around the word.
When I was in fifth grade, I had no idea what "irony" meant. Too clueless! Also, too busy getting into trouble! I had a teacher who went in for shaming us when we misbehaved. He washed out our mouths with bars of soap or made us stand in front of the class with chewed up gum wrapped around our ears. Sometimes he told us to bend over so he could smack our backsides with a wooden paddle.
But here's the deal. The more that teacher washed out my mouth with bars of soap, the more I swore during recess.
The more he made me wrap gum around my ears, the more I chewed it in class. The more he popped me with a paddle, the more I openly defied his directions. In short, the more he punished me, the worse I behaved.
And neither (apparently) did my teacher.
Anyhoo! I certainly get the irony thing now. Yes, I do.
Life is full of it. Which is why I believe you might as well sit back, take notes and (if your heart isn't breaking) grimly relish the inevitable discrepancy between the ideal and the real, between what should be and what is.
So. Here's my bit of Irony for the Day. It's a bit of gentle Garden Irony, actually (because come on — who doesn't love gentle Garden Irony?) and it involves a flower we're seeing lots of this spring.
The pansy!
OK. If anyone had called me a pansy when I was younger I would have been insulted. Especially in the fifth grade. BECAUSE. I. WAS. NOT. A. WIMP. If I got hit in the face with a dodge ball I would have sucked it up like a sixth-grader (that was my motto in those days: "Suck it up like a sixth-grader"), and I would have done my best not to cry.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I took up gardening and discovered that the pansy is the least wimpy flower in the mixed border. I'm not kidding. The pansy is as sturdy as they come. Wind? Bring it on! Torrential rain? Yawn. Snow? Ha! The pansy laughs in the face of snow! "Ha, ha, ha!" the pansy laughs.
For all its fancy blooms, for all its dainty frills, the pansy is one tough customer. Cheerful. Generous. Undemanding. Colorful. An all-around good sport that plays well with others (especially if "others" are tulips). But still. The pansy is as tough as they come.
Oh, I am SUCH a fan.
And I am not being ironic in the least when I say I'd be soooo flattered if someone called me one. ...
E-mail: acannon@desnews.com
