Irony, Farragut Square

I don’t particularly have an update since Monkey and I spent the weekend not doing things of note. But, I had to share this little tidbit which happened a couple of weeks ago and I vowed then that it would be part of an Ophelia update.

Monkey and I go to Firehook for lunch, and as we walk in, we see a sample plate of pecan sandies. They don’t look so good, so we pass by and get our lunches. Afterward, as we sit and contemplate, we decide it would be fun to split a frozen custard to top off the lunch, so we head around the corner to Dickey’s. Custard in hand, we find ourselves on the corner waiting to cross the street, heading back in the direction of Firehook, and in the unfortunate position of having the most ABOMINABLE human beings behind us. That’s right: undergrads who get their fashion advice straight out of Abercrombie catalogs and Caddyshack movies and don’t understand why “Brah” isn’t an acceptable pronoun. There are two of them, significantly unshorn and over-tousled in that trendy “I’m-using-too-much-product-but-I’m-supposed-to-look-like-I-have-beach-hair-
(Even-though-we’re-in-the-middle-of-DC)” way*, and in serious need of either a belt or a wedgie (just for the hell of it… I mean, that’s what you’re asking for when you’re showing me your nasty old underwear, right?).

So, Brah, they’re going on and on about how stupid some people are and how “you wouldn’t believe what some people will do for free stuff, Brah.” I put this in quotation marks because it is a quotation, directly from the mouth of the donkey himself. They’re being very derisive about it and giving the air that they’re so far above it, but I really don’t understand how one can be so lofty when “Brah” is still part of your [active] vocabulary. Brah probably doesn’t even know what derisive means. Brah is still probably pre-pubescent.

At this point, finally and thankfully, the light changes, so we shuffle across the street.

As we approach the open door of Firehook, I imagine to myself that they’re heading there (so they won’t be in my ear with their wretched conversation,) when I think how funny it would be if they headed straight for the free samples (you see where this is going.) I barely have “How much you wanna bet…” out of my mouth before Monkey has SPOTTED IT HAPPENING. With eyes wide and mouth agape from being truly speechless, he stares and I turn from him just in time as we pass the door to see these two shining examples of the human male reaching into the sample box.

I find it kind of fulfilling when God shows me his sense of irony, and I especially like it when I have it all to myself or I share it only with Monkey. But on this day, God was just spot-on, and so I had to share with everyone else. Maybe you had to be there, but it was definitely the best laugh I had all month.

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* I have only known one person to master the beach-hair look and that was because he truly had beach hair. Beach hair comes from a mixture of long immersions in salt water and a deep conditioning treatment of board wax. In high school, my friend Jonas would surf every morning before school... which didn’t leave a lot of time for a shower. (“But the ocean is water” I think he once argued.) This is not to say my buddy was not a clean guy; it’s just that he was clean with a perpetual coating of saltwater. And the conjunction of events to get beach hair was something that I seriously doubted was the case about these two, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day, midweek, and whose rainbow sandals had obviously never touched water nor sand in all their existence.