Death
The danger of having a nice job in a nice place is that nice former colleagues, now cut adrift in the social limbo of retirement, keep coming back to talk to you; and the danger of being a nice person is that the sting of conscience is only salved by the conversational castor oil of self-sacrifice. So when a white-haired, plump little potato of a woman tells me about The Ways Things Used To Be (Before You Came Along), I gotta listen, listen listen listen.
“The thing about being seventy,” she intones somberly, “Is that you can’t make plans anymore. Ten years, five years, two, you don’t know how long you have left. You won’t see your own grandchildren grow up. You keep the house tidy so that it won’t be too hard for your daughters to clear out when something happens to you. These things. But you still have to go on living your life as if nothing were different, even though it might all end today, tomorrow, next week.”
She sighs wistfully and I want, I want I want I want to leap from my chair with a Cartmanesque screech of “GodDAMMIT! What am I supposed to say to that?!” But I can’t. Instead I have to lie, spout platitudes, pretend not only that I understand but that, hey, it’s no biggie, you’ve got years to go before you’ll need to worry about things like that, man, tough broad like you will probably see the rest of us out etc.
You’re right. You’ll die soon. How awful.
You may have noticed that I am scared of Death. You may also have noticed that the Pope of Rome’s a Catholic, and that a bear shits in the woods. But what I am actually afraid of is humourlessness. I’m not that keen on dying, but I can accept it. What I can’t accept is that it isn’t funny. It won’t be like in Super Mario when I triple somersault through falling bricks and fireballs only to fucking volley a green shell against myself. There’ll be no harp-playing angel hovering above my head; I won’t be going around the Glasgow Underground trying to punch other ghosts, or coming back as a snowman, or an oven glove, or an origami swan. I’ll just be lying there. Dead. It’s not a pleasant thought.
I don’t know. Maybe death is like being drunk, only funny when it happens to you. Who knows. I hope at least my murderer has a laugh.