Ironic

I remember one time, I was somewhere in the teens, and we were driving and I asked my mom, over her shoulder as she was sitting in the front seat: -hey mom, what does ironic mean?
And she said “well….” and thought about it for a while so I sad:
-is it like when you have ten thousand spoons but all you need is a knife?
I already knew that was the correct answer, I had the entire album memorized and loved it like I had never loved a CD before. Or since, really. But some of it just didn’t quite make sense to me.
I didn’t get it.
And not necessarily because the words were too hard, I had a dictionary and knew how to use it, but still. I couldn’t imagine what it would look like if a person fell with their heels over their head, I had no idea what you did when you wined and dined somebody and I’m not even going to go into what I thought it meant to go down on someone in a theatre (although it’s a lot more innocent than the real deal..)
And then there was “ironic.” I felt like I needed more of an explanation, because to me, a mountain of spoons when you need a knife and a non-smoking sign on your cigarette break were not the same at all. Not even close. And then the plane crashing down…? Nope, had to ask mom.

(The word ironic, by the way, is the same in Swedish and English)

Back to the car. Mom goes: No… no, I wouldn’t say that’s ironic, really, that’s more unnecessary or bad luck. For something to be ironic it needs something darker, more sarcastic to it…. wouldn’t you say? She turned to my dad and he agreed and then they talked about the words ironic and sarcastic and comedians they thought were funny and satires they had seen and god knows what else.
I was sitting in the backseat, watching trees go by and I couldn’t decide who to trust, my parents or Alanis Morisette?

I just remembered that today because I was thinking how ironic it is that last year we were sitting in a decent size duplex and wished for more space. Now we live in a huge house and spend almost all our time in a small bedroom.
Isn’t that ironic? Don’t you think?