Crazy News and My Demise

Many of us have, if not a sympathetic heart, a caring heart for the ill. Admittedly but with slight protest, even I can become a sucker and feel bad for the old guy who worked 30 years in a coal mine and smoked 2 packs a day and think, "Maybe all of the information DID get past one person".

In reality, my criteria for picking who to feel bad for, who to hope can die quickly and painlessly, and who I wish would have a sudden infusion of extra-sensory overload as they go through a steady stream of chemotherapy, is as complicated as the new tax laws. So like the government, I will just say that the rules are in place and you have to trust me on them.

As I get older I have become more aware of how life is not infinite and the myriad of ways we as humans move on to the next stage. Some of us go quietly and dignified while others are well chronicled as a part of Darwin's theory. I have always thought about my journey to the finish line rather than about the last breath itself and the one ailment I feel I would be most comfortable with is "Old-Timers" disease. I have come to believe that if diagnosed early enough, I could start to prepare myself, and those around me, for what is to come and therefore to a degree, alter some of the wiring in my brain to accept the Nike phrase Just Do It. By it, I mean be the carefree entertainer I have always wanted to be but suppressed do to being easily embarrassed and not confident in my ability to entertain.

So while surfing around online sans, trolling the internet for porn but telling the wife I'm checking scores, I am suddenly distracted by a story of a fire at one of the local hospitals. Today's news story; to use a golf, a baseball, and battered wife analogy, hit the sweet spot. According to my previously mentioned IRS scale for caring, this story registers as something worth paying attention to. It turns out that a truck that was plowing the roads and parking lot of a local "medical facility" had caught fire while next to a wing of the building sending flames four stories high along the brick and windowed siding. As the news flashes pictures of the burned truck and charred building, the news caster states that the fire had taken place at the psychiatric wing of the building.

My mind has now been stimulated in the same way as if I had headed south of the border and arrived in the front row of a donkey show. I am a combination of shocked and smitten. Immediately I am picturing the inmates err... residents standing at their windows, loosely chained to their heating units, watching the tranquil snowfall after most likely being involuntarily overdosed with cocktails of muscle relaxers and anti-depressants. Suddenly, their view is obstructed by a literal wall of fire to which their drawled words and swaying motions are replaced by clapping hands and requests for marshmallows and weenies.

As I finish listening to the announcer in the background of the piece recap the events and give the happy ending about the residents being moved back into their rooms, I couldn't help but picture myself, resigned to my Old-Timers, going through the scenario myself.

Picture a mash-up if you will, of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Matrix. After taking the blue pill I realize each snowflake is part of a binary message sent by the mother ship informing me of her return. Her message is clear: kill the Indian, rid yourself of all uncleanliness by banging the life sized Scooby Doo stuffed animal while singing You've Lost that Loving Feeling, and then jump through the window and into the light that will ultimately lead me to a new world where the area between the vagina and ass is called the mouth.

My fear for the fire at the crazy house was not directed towards the residents and the self inflicted harm that could have resulted from what could have been a potential human SMORES roast. It was that in our very well structured society full of Nazi-esque Nurse Ratchett's and bleeding heart Mother Theresa's who have no fucking concept that maybe they really don't know what is best for each person or what they feel, they might just be missing out on the final moment of happiness by someone that is actually just sane enough to know they want to go out in a crazy way.

My vision, and hope would be that after I had taken my final swan dive into the hospital parking lot, that my family and friends would attend my funeral service and have a chuckle or two during the canned comments from the preacher who probably knows me as well as the serial numbers on the money he is collecting for being there. Each time he references how "crazy" the world is, how bad would it be to have a collective "Banzai" from the crowd? Sure beats the hell out of crying about all the pain I had to go through mainlining toxic chemicals.