Controlling Impulse: a Lesson I've Never Quite Learned

I've just had a weird thought, sitting here composing a few blog posts for the future. And, unlike most people (some would qualify RATIONAL people) who, when they have weird thoughts wisely keep them to themselves, I felt the immediate need to blare my odd ponderings to the masses. There must be a name for my disorder, something that applies to the masses of bloggers out there who let you know whenever anything potentially embarrassing happens, the more gross or weird the better. Yes, there must be a term, and if there isn't we need to coin it and let the good people at OED know posthaste.

But ANYWAY, BSR, thy name is tangent.

My weird thought was this, you see, I'm composing some future posts that will auto-publish when I'm on vacation later this summer. I don't want to leave a void of that length, and though I'll have my laptop, and will desperately search for free wi-fi along the way, I can't guarantee posting regularity. Thus, the need to queue up some posts so things don't get too bare around here. But that's not the weird part. The weird, some may say SICK thing I'd thought was, what if something grim happens to me while I'm on vacation, something BAD, rendering me incapacitated or worse. Then these oddly chirpy, no doubt upbeat posts will keep auto-publishing while I'm in god knows what state.

Wouldn't that be... creepy?

Odd to think that way, but there's a backstory that may make this seem at least a little more, well, explicable.  A few years ago I had a dear friend who was dying of terminal cancer, a  friend with the most dark sense of humor in the face of the reaper imaginable. I had a fairly thin skin for that stuff when we first started chatting, but after over six years of listening to this he trained me fairly well to not just laugh at his sick jokes, but to start making them myself. Near the end we were discussing which hors d'oeurves would be best served at his memorial service, and whether or not the powers that control the White Sox park would allow him to request naked women run out onto U.S. Cellular Field, scattering his ashes as they flashed their nubile flesh to the world.

I know how that sounds! I do. But you had to be there.

The fact is, laughter is a release, and faced with the certainty of death it was his weapon of choice in fighting back. He couldn't beat the cancer. He knew that. So the only way to adapt to it was to laugh, even when laughing at death itself. It's a sort of power, it truly is, at a time when a human being is most powerless. It's also one of the few ways that help a person keep a shred of sanity, in between saying goodbyes and making final arrangements.

So that's the reason I can say, "Wouldn't it be funny if I got squashed by a bus on vacation, was rendered dead as the proverbial doornail, but I kept posting here FROM THE GREAT BEYOND..." and actually have a laugh at the idea. The thought of that has a certain grim satisfaction to it, a weird quality that tickles that dark part of my funny bone that I should probably pretend I don't have. But I won't, because I do, and there's no use denying that.

So that's my weird thought for the day. Lucky you, it will hopefully be my only one. At least for today. If I have more I'll put them in those future posts that will publish while I'm away in Maine, communing with moose and eating fudge, though probably not at the same time.

And now I have domestic duties to attend to, so time to depart for the wilds of the homefront.

Comments

[Bluestalking Reader]

It's good to know everyone doesn't think I'm COMPLETELY nuts to think of such weirdo things! That's all I can say...

[Andi]

I hear ya. B. used to be an EMT and he makes sick jokes about things he's seen in retrospect (and at the time). When you see things that atrocious you've gotta find some humor in them to make them bearable. And I love your morbid humor. Keep it up! Your posts keepin' on posting reminded me of the Ray Bradbury short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains." Read it if you get the chance. Amazinggggg!

[Susan Balée]

Hey, girl-- I certainly hope nothing bad happens to you on vacation! But you do love ironies, so that may be why it occurred to you.

I've been crazy busy the last few weeks, but it's a pleasure to drop back in here and see what you've been reading and writing and thinking about.

Moi, I have much to read myself for reviews, though I am now looking longingly at Ivan Doig's "The Whistling Season," which I bought because I so loved "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" last month. Have you done any posts on Doig? He reminds me most of Wallace Stegner, but it may be simply because he writes so well about Western landscapes and the pioneers who settled them. I'm ready to move to Montana after reading the last one....