The Only Way Out

I know its been a while since I posted last, so I'm going to make this one count by talking about what is either the most insane or ingenious idea I've ever had. Probably some mixture of both. While it'll never win me a nobel prize, it just might make me (and you!) the most happy person on the face of the Earth.

Recently I've reached an age where everything around you starts to die. Pets you've had since childhood, beloved gradnparents, the occasional aunt or uncle, etc. I doubt its any coincidence that this tends to happen around the time we begin to become established professionals in our field. It is a real rather than symbolic shedding of our youth, which we have literally now outgrown. Its a simple fact of life that people with gray hair starting to come in rarely have a grandmother doting on them anymore.

I expected all of this and am coming through it just fine. There was, however, one thing I was not prepared for: dying SUCKS. I was lied to all my life and you were too. When I was younger I was told people died of "natural causes" all the time. NO THEY DIDN'T. They suffered weeks and months in hospital beds with people desperately trying to keep them alive while their children wept at their bedsides and their grandchildren (you and I) were sheltered from the experience. Their bodies slowly, painfully decayed whether they were ravaged by cancer or dementia or just normal aging that makes things like bladders and kidneys less functional (and the first part of functional to go is the "fun," let me tell you). No matter what the cause, the result is the same: death by extended pain and torture.

The normal way out of this is to have a living will where you cannot be kept alive in said hospital bed. This doesn't work! There's always one weak kid (since we can't cull the litter anymore...that's another post for another day) who can't stand to see daddy/mommy go and will torture you until you die of it.

That leaves me with only one way out, and here it is: make enemies. The only way to die quickly is to be killed and the only way to be killed is to be involved in a fatal accident or to be murdered. Fatal accidents happen all to infrequently and are, by nature, unpredictable and could happen too soon, so the only choice left is to be murdered. The problem is, I want to live a decently long life, perhaps 70 years or so if I'm lucky, so I don't want this to happen any time soon. On the other hand once you're 70 if you start acting like a complete bastard out of the blue to try and get yourself murdered you're just going to end up in a home on experimental medications for dementia. Also no good.

So here's my solution: The older I get, the more enemies I make. At the fairly young age of 29 I'm not looking to make very many. The more I age, the more of a bastard I'll start to become and the more enemies I'll make. This should hit some critical tipping point and before my body starts to decline, someone will shoot me in the brainstem (I've decided to tell them how best to kill me, if given the opportunity).

While the solution sounds good, there is hidden genius to it. The older I get the less I have to give a shit about what people think! The more enemies I can make, the more I can tell people what dimwitted imbiciles they truly are, and point out everyone's smallest mistakes while I casually search for my car in yet another parking lot. You wonder why that crotchety old man drinking scotch and smoking cigars complains about the entire world with a twinkle in his eyes? Its because he figured it out too.

The other option is, if I can make it to 70 or 80 in incredible physical shape, I'll just put on a skull t-shirt and be like The Punisher played by George Burns. But since I already have a bad back...have I mentioned yet that she left you because she said you suck in bed, and I'm better? Mwaahhahahahah, it begins...