A Recipe for Miscommunication

At risk of propounding a cultural stereotype (whether a denigrating one may be in the eye of the beholder), the Midwest (I'll save the Middle East for future posts) is profoundly irony-challenged. (Not so good on sardonic, either.)

So are most bureaucracies, including educational bureaucracies. (Better left unsaid...)

For some of us, including but not limited to displaced former East Coast, Big City, preferably-Jewish, intellectuals of a certain generation (talk about stereotypes run amok!), irony runs in our very lifeblood. Try as we might to dam it up or to rechannel it, we are not infinitely malleable creations of our own will, and it finds its way to the surface, or, to extend the nautical metaphor, to the sea. The levies cannot hold, not to speak of the Cohens, the Kaplans, or the Wise Bard.
(With apologies to New Orleans, a great and wonderful city.)