Gary's Blue Hands
When Soto goes to church to confess his sins, he meets the “class idiot” Kenneth Colombini, whose arm was blue with ink markings. Before Kenneth goes into the confessional, Gary tells him to better not scribble in there. Ironically, after saying his prayers, Gary discovers that his own hands were blue from ballpoint pen, which upsets him: “I thought of Kenneth Colombini, the laughing clown on his palm, and winced at the thought that I might be like him.”
The Lions
When Gary describes the baseball team called “The Lions,” he points out the irony of their name. Even though they bear the name of the king of the jungle, which implies that they are supposed to be the best baseball team, their performance is low because their players are weak: “Most of the players, the Lions, didn't get any milk or meat either.”
Gary's Mother
When Gary finished building his planter for a playground science competition, he was very proud of his work and wanted to impress his mother. Her response, however, is ironic because she is clearly unimpressed even though her words sound nice: “‘Very pretty,’ she said, her face unmoved.”
The Drive-in
Gary says that if his mother is happy on a Saturday there is a good chance they would go to the movies, which was a rare occasion. Therefore, he and his brother try to make her happy by preparing breakfast for her, working in the garden, and even waxing the car. In the end, she thanks her children by taking them to the drive-in, but ironically, “[t]wenty minutes into the movie, [he] fell asleep with one hand in the popcorn,” so he is not able to enjoy the one thing he was looking forward to.
The Christian Youth Group
Trying to find girlfriends, Gary and his friend Scott decide to visit the Fresno Convention Center, where a Christian youth group is matching people using a computer. However, ironically, Gary immediately associates the Christians there with evil: “We were greeted by some very happy college students in red jackets who went around shaking everyone's hands. They shook mine, and I got sort of sick because their hands were moist. What I remembered most of my Catholic school education was that Sister Marie had said, ‘Evil dwells in moist places.’”
