Irony:
īrənē
the
expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the
opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect
Irony
is frequently misused. Alanis Morrissette
famously ruined this word in the 90’s anthem of the same name, wherein she
posited rhetorically whether a number of downright awful events were “a little
bit ironic. Don’t you think?”
“No,
damn it,” I’ve often ranted to imaginary Alanis, ”You’re abusing the hell out of
that term. Rain on your wedding day just
sucks. A fly in your chardonnay just
sucks. Things don’t even have to be bad
to be ironic. Read a book.”
Spa
knows I feel this way. The subject had
been covered in detail at some point along the hike, in the glory days when
imminent death wasn’t yet the topic du jour. But he then proceeded to point out
the alleged irony of the way a lack of water had not so long ago threatened us,
and we had begged aloud for rain. His words were punctuated by a thunderclap so loud and close it could have come from inside my own head.
“Spa?”
“Yeah?”
“If
we live through this, I might have to kill you for that.”
“This is bad.”
“Agreed. What can we
do?”
“He needs to stay active.
Mobile. “
“Pushups, jumping jacks, that kinda stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s gonna look kinda funny in his underwear.”
“Wasn’t he your pledge brother? Didn’t you guys cover this in initial
hazing?”
“He was, but we were pussies. We hazed like Girl Scouts.”
Schil was in a bind. Every article of clothing was soaked through
with freezing rain, including the clothes on his body, which we instructed him
to remove for that reason. To an
uneducated onlooker, we seemed to want to dress the cacti surrounding the small
clearing we had pegged for a campsite.
Schil’s 165-pound, 6’4” frame, a
splicing of James Franco and Ichabod Crane, lacked any insulation. The temperature was dropping and the wind was
picking up. Hypothermia was taking hold
– his hands and feet lost feeling, and he was shivering like a marital aid
plugged into a car battery.
Spa and I needed action. And action we provided. I tore through my camping pack and found our stove. Thankfully my shoulders are naturally loose,
or I could have pulled something while patting my own back for fixing this
device the day before. I pressurized the
fuel source, lit the pilot, threw open the valve, and was greeted with the
friendly roar of blue butane flames. I
poured water, our frenemy, into the small pot and silently willed it to heat
faster. I looked over at Spa to see if
he could join me in being uselessly frustrated at thermodynamics, but he was busy
erecting our tent. Schil, I then
confirmed, did look ridiculous doing bare-ass pushups in the middle of a
National Park.
“Schil, c’mere.” I beckoned,
remembering the gravity of the situation.
“Put this on.” My sleeping bag, due
to the advice of Spa, had been wrapped in a garbage bag during the
downpour. At the time of this advice, I
had ungratefully considered Spa out of his mother-loving mind for suggesting it
might rain on this barren hellscape.
Oops. The water then reached a
boil, and I poured it into canteens.
These I wrapped in my own somewhat damp clothes. “And put these in there
with you.” Schil thusly wound up in a sleeping bag clutching heated water bottles
like Teddy Bears.
Then we ate. And ate some more. Finding we had additional rice leftover we
then continued eating. We were
full. We were stable. Schil had once again not died despite our
best efforts at poor camping planning.
So it was time to go to sleep.
Our alarms set for the wee hours and our minds already on the commute
home, we settled into the tent to sleep off any residual bad luck.
Then the storm came back, and any certainty we felt about our safety evaporated into the night air.
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