Great Moments in Irony

I’m not good at irony.

Despite Alanis Morissette’s teachings, I still use the phrase “ironically” in situations where it doesn’t apply at least twice a day.

It’s possible that hipsters have just screwed up my entire perception of irony, but I cannot verify that one way or another.

In any instance, I’m going to go ahead and declare what happened in Montana this past weekend to be “ironic.”

Here are the details from the Billings Gazette:

A West Virginia man is recovering and another man is in jail after what authorities described as a random shooting on Saturday night near Glasgow.

Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier said that on Saturday night, Raymond Dolin, 39, was sitting on the side of Highway 2 a few miles west of Glasgow and waiting for a ride when a man drove up in a maroon pickup, shot him and drove off shortly before 6 p.m.

Dolin, from West Virginia, is hitchhiking across the country and writing a memoir called “The Kindness of America,” Meier said.

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

Yes. Yes it is.

Seriously though, I cannot wait to see if this makes it into the book.

It pretty much has to, right?!

At the very least, he might want to think about changing the title to something more appropriate, perhaps “America is Pretty Cool…Except When I Get Shot for No Good Reason” or maybe “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Gun Violence.”