What would you do?
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| Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay |
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.
"Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again...he was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom." -from the novel Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),
I'm in no immediate danger of deletion as far as I know, but obviously I'm slowly but steadily dying, just like you. Actually, I know what I would do, and I'm doing it, but I don't have any advice to offer. Most people would find this particular geezers lifestyle rather boring I suspect.
{You're doing it again.}
Doing what?
{We've talked about this. All the many writers and teachers out there who try to earn their daily bread by writing about writing advise crafting killer first sentences. It's the age of too much of everything so ya gotta reach out and grab 'em by the... throat in some form or fashion if you wish to succeed.}
"Having recently turned 39 for the 31st time it's occurred to me that at any given moment if the doorbell were to ring and I peered out my peephole to see who was standing on my stoop I might see a tall individual wearing a black, full-length hoodie with a hood that completely shielded his/her/their face, assuming he/she/they even had a face, and carrying a large scythe."
Better?
{Too long, H. sapiens devolving attention spans will soon rival the attention spans of goldfish, but it could be worse... What's a scythe?}
That large, scary-looking, curved blade with a long handle ("...an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or harvesting crops") the Grim Reaper is always pictured with. The Grim Reaper's called the Grim Reaper because he/she/they use theirs to harvest human souls.
For the record, I'm not speaking of the (almost famous?) heavy metal band called Grim Reaper formed in the 1980s who apparently have been breaking up and reforming ever since. I've never heard of them but when I typed Grim Reaper into the Googometer the first hit returned was a Wikipedia entry about the band.
{Just because you've never heard of them... wait, do you mean a sickle?}
No, a sickle is a small scythe, picture the symbol for communism, the hammer and sickle? In fact, my family owned a sickle (I assume it was originally Grandma Barbs?) when I was a kid. For the longest time, I thought sickle was how you pronounced the word scythe as I couldn't imagine how you would pronounce such an ugly word.
{Were your parents communists?}
No, Senator McCarthy, not to my knowledge, merely traditional working-class Democrats back when the Democrats were the party of the working class and it was possible for a privileged patriarch to support a family while simultaneously oppressing his stay-at-home wife.
However, given he had seven kids to feed and had to paint a lot of walls and trim to do so, I suspect that neither he nor Mum felt particularly privileged.
{They should've had fewer kids. Three is enough to keep the Social Security Ponzi scheme going and prevent the pending population collapse other countries are already starting to experience.}
You make a valid point but since I'm number five I confess I'm glad they didn't. Oh, and for the record, I don't have a doorbell or a peephole as all visitors to Casa de Chaos must first be cleared by security at the main gate. Just putin' that out there.
Life's a bitch and then you die. How many times have you heard someone say that? Have you ever thought about the logical contradiction expressed by that statement? If life's a bitch isn't death an effective solution to the problem?
I was taught by Sister Mary McGillicuddy that if I followed all the Rules&Regs she and the Roman Catholic Church were going to a great deal of trouble to teach me, by marinating me in them all day every day of the school year, that when I died I would live in paradise, forever and ever, amen.
And yet, various believers in various ideologies, religious and otherwise (Muslims and the multiple virgin thing springs immediately to mind for some reason), most of us (fortunately) don't have a death wish.
Just the opposite in fact.
I'm old, so I read the obituaries every morning in what's left of Hooterville's daily paper. I do this in case someone I have, or rather had, a connection with that wasn't close enough to result in the dreaded phone call has died. It's a sorta/kinda socially responsible thing to do.
{Whatever you do, don't tell your gentlereaders about your unfortunate tendency to think, "Ha, beat-cha!" whenever you come across the obituaries of people born the same year as you or later.}
You realize, Dana, that I could start taking my meds again and you're outta here, right? Anyway, I've noticed two things about the use of my favorite obituarial phrase — _______ received his/her heavenly wings (or one of its celestial variations) — seems to be declining.
Entered into Eternal Rest is topping the charts nowadays, at least in the Greater Hooterville Metropolitan Area. I confess I don't know how they do things in Cleveland.
Also, I've yet to read an obituary that has used the word their instead of his or her. Too soon I guess.
{Obituarial is an actual word?}
Yes indeed, as is obituarist, yet another career opportunity I would've been good at that never occurred to me to pursue when I was a callowyute.
Well, I gotta go. I'm off to the doctor's office. Nothing to worry about, it's probably just heartburn.
Poppa loves you,
