Just In Case My Luck Runs Out…
She was a skilled Bunco player.
That was the subheading of an obituary in Sunday’s paper. It was positioned right next to the picture of the deceased, encapsulating her life’s essence in that one square inch of newspaper. Not being an avid reader of obituaries, I almost missed it as I turned the page, but that somewhat humiliating homage hooked me.
“How depressing,” I thought. While simultaneously beginning to compose my next blog post.
Fortunately, the woman in question had apparently achieved much greater things than her Bunco playing skills and they were thoughtfully outlined in the several paragraphs underneath her picture. In fact, there were at least seven other characteristics described in the article that would have made more appropriate headlines. I sighed with relief that there wasn’t a recently deceased eighty year old woman who had been known for nothing greater than her amazing luck with dice.
Let’s face it People, Bunco ain’t a game that requires skill.
But, of course it got me to thinking about my own subheading. What would my, “She was skilled at _________” be? Well, I guess it would depend on who was chosen to describe my skills. These would be the likely responses:
Dimples – making duct tape bags.
Cap’n Firepants – humiliating me in public.
Wonderbutt – picking up my poop.
Mrs. P.I.B. – stemming the tide of blood every time she clipped my toenails.
Crash and The Dictator – cheating at Scrabble.
Big Mean Kitty – Nothing. She’s a hack.
Upon reflection, I think I may have to consider writing my own subheading. Or, I might just emulate the mother of a friend of mine, and go ahead and compose my whole obituary right now while I’m actually lucid. Except I’m not going to do anything stupid like e-mail it to the daughter who I didn’t trust to write it in the first place. I’m going to skip the middleman and just file it with the paper myself tomorrow.
I figure I better do it soon because Big Mean Kitty has been increasingly hostile.
So, I’ve got all the blah blah blah about tremendous teaching, prodigious parenting, and wonderful wifing down. Now I just need that six word subheading.
She was skilled at –
finding inane blog topics.
Now that takes some actual strategic thinking, People.
The Sign on Heaven's Door?
Posted on October 6, 2011, in Blogging, Death, Humor and tagged bunco, humor, obituary, skills. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
whatimeant2say 
It must take real skill to write some people’s obituaries.
I love the Big Mean Kitty comments. I’m going to be sad when you finally have proof of his transgressions and send him packing. Cats never take any of the blame, anyway.
Maybe your tombstone should say, “Damn she could spell!”
Mine would almost certainly say, “Scattered but Lovable.”
Thanks for the read, found you through Miranda (Scatteredmoments) and I enjoyed my visit to your pages! See you again sometime as I’m following now 🙂
I hate to think what mine might say – maybe I should write it now.
In one of my writing courses in college we had to write our own obituary. The creepier part was filling out this factual questionnaire prior to writing the piece. It was like a job application for the dead. Name, place of birth, place of death, date of birth, date of death, notable accomplishments, spouse information, children information, parent information, etc. It was pretty weird attaching dates of death to people still living, dates of birth to people not yet conceived and information about a not yet met spouse. Hmmmm, I should dig that out and see how close my guesses were!
Woof. I’m stumped. And it doesn’t seem like a difficult question!
I am skilled at getting that last bit of Nutella out of the jar. Some people are just gifted.
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