Unlucky To Still Be Alive

(*I’m also over at Aiming Low today sharing some Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey Jared Karol)

You were surprised to be alive today, with the whole rapture thing that happened on Saturday. But when you woke up Sunday morning, you checked your pulse, felt around for blood from bullet holes or stab wounds, discovered your body was perfectly intact, and figured you’d been one of the people who had been saved.

But then you read this article and it turned out you had misinterpreted the whole thing. No one died this past Saturday, May 21, 2011 from the rapture. That was just judgment day, so if you had been selected to go to heaven, that’s where you went. And if you were still here, it’s because you hadn’t make the cut, and you now had until October 21, 2011 when the whole world goes up in flames and takes you with it.

There’s no way to be completely sure why god hates you, but after a little bit of reflection, you started to piece together a pretty good idea.

It started off innocently enough—as these things usually did—with no humanly possible way to divine the eventual ramifications of your naïve actions. You were maybe nine or ten and you were experimenting—copying what you heard the other kids saying, or people on the streets you passed, or actors in the movies you watched.

It started with a simple “god damn” when you tripped on a sidewalk, or dropped a piece of toast. It didn’t feel natural to say it, but everyone else was saying it, so you went with it. You didn’t go to church, so you didn’t have that pressure, and no one else was around to tell you not to say it.

Slowly, you started to use that language more often and in more situations. You became more comfortable throwing out not just a “god damn it” when things didn’t go your way, but a “Jesus Christ” as well. Perhaps you wanted to keep it all in the family.

Before you knew it, you were a gutter mouthed teenager throwing around “god damns” and “Jesus Christs” like pleases and thank yous. You even began to use them in situations not just reserved for anger and frustration. “God damn it” and “Jesus Christ” became the new “aloha” or “dude” and were used ubiquitously to address a variety of situations, spanning a plethora of different moods.

Statements like “God damn, dude, that was awesome!” and “Jesus Christ! I can’t believe how hot it is!” became staples in your lexicon.

But not satisfied with that level of swearing, you pushed it to a more sophisticated stage. You began to pepper your statements with expletives that added emphasis to your purpose, and color to your vocabulary.

“God %^&*ing damn it! I can’t stand it when the computer crashes!” and “Jesus %^&*ing Christ! You’re the worst driver I’ve ever seen!” were representative of the new and reinvigorated you.

You rarely thought twice about using this language. You were not worried that someone would take offense or that you were using it in inappropriate social situations. In fact, you began to use it purposefully in what were considered to be inappropriate situations just to get a rise out of people. It was fun, and you started to think that talking this way made you kind of sexy.

And when you had children, you began to throw around your “god damns” and “Jesus Christs” with increasing frequency, because, really, most times there were no alternatives. The inexplicable behaviors of your children, and the unavoidable circumstances they presented you with on a daily basis left with you with very few options.

Now your most common statements were things like, “God %^&*ing damn it! How’s the god damn diaper pale full again?!” and “Jesus God damn %^&*ing Christ! What’s the god damn point of a twenty minute nap?”

And so it went. There was no turning back. You’d gone too far to question the rationale of using the lords’ names with such regular disrespect. It had become a part of who you were, for better or for worse. For the most part you were okay with it, and it didn’t cause you undo worry.

Until you heard about this rapture thing-y, and you wondered if all these years of alternative praying had caused you to miss out on the most eternal heavenly party of all time. You wondered what you’d be missing—would there be virgins, and mixed drinks and unlimited free golf?

And as you sat in your bed on the morning of May 22, 2011, you knew that it was too late. God had given you plenty of chances to repent and change your behavior, but you threw them all away, and you now realized that you had five months left to live, and no amount of repenting was going to do one bit of good.

Not one goddamn bit of good. Jesus Christ! What an anticlimactic way to die!