... ..piss on the grave ....February 6, 2005   The obituaries are on page two of this small town's newspaper.  I only scan the front page before I turn it and announce "Let's see if anyone good died yesterday."  I began this ritual over twenty years ago when my first born child was a toddler.  He would crawl into my lap as soon as I retrieved the paper and, patiently, he would await the verdict.  Anyone good did not refer to one who has led a righteous life.  The term was never used as one might describe a movie or a  book, for instance  "Read any good books lately?  Seen any good movies?"  No, anyone good was always understood to mean anyone whose demise is generally beneficial to society or, at least, to me. "Oh, look," I would say to my impressionable son.  "You see this skank right here?  She once looked me in the eye and swore she was disabled from working because of low back pain.  Turns out she was working all right--as an exotic dancer.  The woman was a human pretzel.  A meth-crazed human pretzel in a G-string." "I glad dat skunk is dead," observed my three year-old son, poking the page with his stubby index finger. "That's skank, son, not skunk.  Get it right.  Though, come to think of it, she did smell a bit skunky." Or I might point to a particular obit and recount how I had loaned the guy some money when he was down on his luck and the son-of-a-bitch never paid me back even after his own asshole of a father died and left the guy a fortune.  "I ought to go over to that fat fucker's house and rob him while his little trophy wife is squeezing out phony tears at the funeral home.  That's what I oughta do." "Yeah, daddy.  That's what you ought to do." Even now, as I live alone, my children grown and disturbed, I turn to the obituaries every morning and proclaim aloud, "Let's see if anyone good died yesterday."  And I read the names and mumble, the silence otherwise unbroken save the loud ticking of the kitchen clock. previous..|..current..|..archives..|..1st quarter index..|..next

©  2005 by the beastmaster