I hope to hell I’m never
terminally ill. I can’t think of anything that would suck worse than that.
I'll be the whiniest, most
obnoxious, most bitter and demanding and unlovable terminally ill sonuvabitch
that ever lived. By the time it’s all
over, I won’t have a single friend left. One of my hospice workers will
probably get pissed and strangle me. You won’t see me on the cover of People magazine if I’m
terminally ill because in order to make the cover of People magazine you have
to die with dignity and grace. Screw
that. If death is sadistically unleashing a tidal wave of pain on me, I’m sure
as hell not gonna sit there and be gracious about it. Who the hell made that
rule up? Probably not somebody who was terminally ill. The only way I’ll die
with grace is if there’s a woman dying next to me named Grace. The only way the
word noble will be associated with my death is if her name is Grace Noble.
I know I couldn’t be all stoic and
strong in the face of death even if I wanted to because I hate pain. I’m such a
fucking baby when it comes to pain. I’ll do anything to avoid it. I used to see
this grief counselor named Frank. Frank was super cool but he always told me I
should “walk into” pain. When he said that, it made me think of the outhouse on
my grandma’s farm. I have warm childhood memories of shitting in that outhouse.
Grandma had a perfectly fine and functional bathroom in her house but for some reason her
husband always went out to shit in the outhouse, even if there was a foot of
snow. So when we visited, I really looked forward to going out there with him
and shitting like a real man! It was so cool. There was even a girly picture
centerfold tacked up on the back of the outhouse door. And it was especially
cool to shit in cold weather because the shit steamed.
But I was also afraid of going to the
outhouse because I feared I could easily fall down the hole into the bottomless
quicksand pit of waste below. The hole was man-sized and I was just a boy.
Walking into pain, it seemed to me, would be like willfully jumping down into
that hole just for the fullness of the experience. Thanks but no. I ‘m more comfortable executing a purely defensive
strategy of avoiding falling down the hole in the first place.
If I was terminally ill, I would
probably be insanely jealous of the healthy. Because when I was an inmate at the
state-operated boarding school for crippled children, aka the Sam Houston
Institute of Technology (SHIT), I was jealous of the free. I envied the
employees, the visitors, the delivery guys. I envied anyone who could just
walk out the front door with no pass, no doctor’s permission, no escort, no questions
asked. Consequently, I signed up for
any lame-ass field trip opportunity that came along just to get the hell out of
there. I must’ve seen “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” and “Up With People” on stage 50
damn times, though it was probably just once.
That’s the kind of crazy shit
jealousy will drive a person to do. So
God knows what I’ll be like if I’m terminally ill. But I know myself well
enough to confidently predict that I’ll be a real douche bag. So you should
start thinking up polite excuses to avoid me, just in case.