informercials and irony

You probably won’t understand this then, she said, after learning I didn’t own a home.

She could be right. There was plenty of things I couldn’t make sense of, things that I saw on a regular basis. The man last night that was outside, dancing in the moonlight, wrapping himself in tinfoil. Why homeless people like cotton balls and steel wool so much. How two boys could sexually assult a mentally handicapped plummer with a plumming snake in the bowling alley he worked in, like two boys had in a newspaper article I read. Or what about Bill Cosby and the date rape case he is fighting in court.

So, this lady, the home owner might be right. Maybe I won’t understand, still, I humored her. Tell me about it anyways.

So she began:

It’s a ladder, she explained, with a trace of irony in her seventy year old voice. It’s just fantastic. It holds 800 lbs, you could fit your whole family on it, friends too. It’s that sturdy.

She had been watching an infomercial.

The man was flipping it around like a ruler, it was so light. Sturdy too.
It was just four payments. Easy payments.

As she kept on describing the various perks of this amazing ladder my mind began to wander.

She really wanted this, I could tell. She was at first worried that the man on the phone from the Philippines was going to rip her off, steal her bank account number, he credit cards, her life. Now she was growing concerned she wouldn't get her ladder.

There’s something about the elderly that makes me sad and as she kept describing the ladder to me I realized what it was. There was no irony in her words.