Irony Incarnate

(PHOTO: HARTINI A)

Irony Incarnate is when you’re waiting at the bus stop. Forever. And one bus goes by and it’s full so it doesn’t stop. And more people pile up at the stop. And all the other buses you do not want go by three times over before yours arrives.

And in the meantime you’re listening to a BBC News podcast that is highlighting the new formula arrived at by Caltech and Harvard math gurus that breaks down whether or not its worth it to continue waiting for the bus that doesn’t come, or screw it and walk. And to make things even more ironic, their equation usually errs on the side of continuing to wait while me, this morning, in my frigidly cold and yet fuming state, could have walked to work in the time it took me to arrive on my tardy and stinky bus.

Now I know I’m not the only one afflicted. The waiting-for-the-bus-that-won’t-come conundrum is so widespread that it inspired a brilliant poem by Wendy Cope that starts off “Bloody men are like bloody buses. You wait for about a year And as soon as one approaches your stop. Two or three others appear.” She’s a wise one is that Wendy Cope. Sure enough, behind my packed Number 8 bus this morning (it was like lemmings jumping off a cliff but in reverse: humans irrationally jumping on in droves) were two others, empty and fancy free.