A
handsome young baseball coach who is killed by a line drive in Arkansas. Two
young workers fall a thousand feet to their deaths from the tower in Kansas. An
elevator man in Iowa slips and literally drowns in a mountain of grain. An
old woman in Virginia is attacked and eaten by pit bulls. A Brazilian who
is swallowed whole by an anaconda . . . kids falling from Ferris wheels . . . .
No one really wants to die, but no one wants to die in pointless ways like the people above. There are good ways to die and there are bad ways to die. There is something unworthy, or unjust, or unfair, or just unnormal about a father diving to his death to simply catch a foul ball. Or how about the relatives of that man killed by the otter here in Florida? What do they talk about at that funeral? Hmmm? No one wants their obituary to read: Elmer Fudd, 56, died at his home yesterday after choking on a chicken bone. These sort of lousy deaths negate an entire lifetime simply because an odd or ridiculous demise sticks; it is the last, lingering thing we remember of the victim. No matter how many Nobel Prizes were won, no matter how many cancers were cured, the grand culmination of a valuable, productive life is: "Fred? Oh, yeah, he had his head chopped off by a helicopter blade." That will be the last mortal act of the deceased and the first thing remembered about a person: "Marvin? Isn’t he the one who tripped and fell into a vat of acid?"
The way I definitely don't want to go? "Poor Mike . . . he died of rectal cancer." Or "Poor Mike . . . a piece of space junk conked him on the cocoanut stiffer than a mitten!" Or "Poor Mike, ha, ha, ha. . . . And, to think, he was a vegetarian, and to be killed like he was . . . run over and smashed flat as a squirrel by a meat wagon as he crossed an Arby's parking lot!"
No, if we must go down then let us go "in our sleep," or just via a simple heart attack, or please, just with normal lung or brain cancer. Better still, let a man go down doing something grand, something heroic: Like dying while saving a bus full of crippled kids as the runaway vehicle is about to careen over a cliff, or clocking out while rescuing caged kittens and puppies at a burning pet store, or buying the farm in a gunfight after killing all three muggers attempting to rob and rape a woman. Now those are deaths I can live . . . rather, those are deaths I can die with.
My dream death: To just drop down stone dead while I am walking along the banks of a river by myself. If I miss the stream and fail to fall in and am not flushed away out to sea , that's okay too, just as long as my body is never found. I will fertilize the tree I fall near, or provide food for some scavenging animals, will be no fuss or bother to anyone, and I will save Michelle about 10K in funeral expenses.
No one really wants to die, but no one wants to die in pointless ways like the people above. There are good ways to die and there are bad ways to die. There is something unworthy, or unjust, or unfair, or just unnormal about a father diving to his death to simply catch a foul ball. Or how about the relatives of that man killed by the otter here in Florida? What do they talk about at that funeral? Hmmm? No one wants their obituary to read: Elmer Fudd, 56, died at his home yesterday after choking on a chicken bone. These sort of lousy deaths negate an entire lifetime simply because an odd or ridiculous demise sticks; it is the last, lingering thing we remember of the victim. No matter how many Nobel Prizes were won, no matter how many cancers were cured, the grand culmination of a valuable, productive life is: "Fred? Oh, yeah, he had his head chopped off by a helicopter blade." That will be the last mortal act of the deceased and the first thing remembered about a person: "Marvin? Isn’t he the one who tripped and fell into a vat of acid?"
The way I definitely don't want to go? "Poor Mike . . . he died of rectal cancer." Or "Poor Mike . . . a piece of space junk conked him on the cocoanut stiffer than a mitten!" Or "Poor Mike, ha, ha, ha. . . . And, to think, he was a vegetarian, and to be killed like he was . . . run over and smashed flat as a squirrel by a meat wagon as he crossed an Arby's parking lot!"
No, if we must go down then let us go "in our sleep," or just via a simple heart attack, or please, just with normal lung or brain cancer. Better still, let a man go down doing something grand, something heroic: Like dying while saving a bus full of crippled kids as the runaway vehicle is about to careen over a cliff, or clocking out while rescuing caged kittens and puppies at a burning pet store, or buying the farm in a gunfight after killing all three muggers attempting to rob and rape a woman. Now those are deaths I can live . . . rather, those are deaths I can die with.
My dream death: To just drop down stone dead while I am walking along the banks of a river by myself. If I miss the stream and fail to fall in and am not flushed away out to sea , that's okay too, just as long as my body is never found. I will fertilize the tree I fall near, or provide food for some scavenging animals, will be no fuss or bother to anyone, and I will save Michelle about 10K in funeral expenses.
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Our local economy sucks. That’s pretty clear. No matter how much they dress up the gorilla with fluffy, frilly news about “recovery,” it’s still a gorilla. The only growth industry that I see locally seems to be senior crime, as in crimes against same. Not a day passes in Florida, of course, without some greedy old coot being swindled from their life savings after being promised millions.
Now, with so many wild and desperate drug addicts running loose, there is also a noticeable jump in strong-arm robberies. Since seniors are weak, slow, stupid, and seemingly always unarmed, they have become the perfect targets of young thugs.
Up at Ellenton the other morning, an 85-year-old woman was out getting her newspaper at the Ridgewood Mobile Home Park. Up walks a poor, disadvantaged city yuff in a hoodie. He marches the victim right back into the trailer, steals all her jewelry, then leaves without any risk to one inch of his worthless carcass.
A few days later, in the same area, another old woman was walking around at Trailer Estates at midnight when a cyclist wearing a black hoodie knocked her down and stole her purse.
Walking around at midnight? Purse? Whatever. . . .
Thought: Mobile Gardens? Trailer Estates? Palm Harbor Mobile Home and RV Park? . . . there’s that gorilla again. No matter how fancy you dress a gorilla, it’s still a gorilla. Although there is no comparison between the rather nice trailer parks down here and the crappy meth holes up north, seems crime, like F-5 tornadoes, are drawn to trailer parks no matter what they are called.
