Orange CountyYou know what Irony is, don’t you.

It’s the opposite of Wrinkly.

But seriously, irony is a staple of a writer’s life, a tone I grasp when engaged in conversation with others. What follows is one of the all-time best of my life.

I was going to Indiana to visit my family, alone because my husband was traveling on business elsewhere, which was his job. I was in the aisle seat that he reserved for me, a perk of frequent flyer privileges. I seldom engage my seat mate, preferring to read – at last – in the free, unfettered air above Earth.

But the chick seated next to me on this particular flight was in a talkative mood, well, an aggravated mood, ignited as soon as she learned that I lived in California. By choice.

She almost became apoplectic. She almost jumped out of her seat, onto the bandwagon of over-development. She raged and ranted about how crowded southern California was – and this was twenty-five years ago. What would she think of our plentifully-populated place now?

On and on, up one side of Orange County and down the other, a place that seemed to incriminate itself more with each of her words.

Finally, the descent into Phoenix, Arizona began, where I’d change one Southwest plane for another. As would she, headed for Idaho, which was superlatively proclaimed. She was going to join her husband, who was working there.

“What does your husband do?” I politely asked.

“Oh, he’s a developer,” she stated proudly.

Now I was apoplectic, though only inside. I was too aghast to speak.

Oh, really…wouldn’t he be one of the reasons that Orange County is crowded? And, then he eloped to Big Sky country to rape their open spaces with more building?

I actually wouldn’t call her position ironic. I’d call it blind-to-self chutzpah.

What would you call it, Constant Reader?