Wednesday, December 07, 2005

In Poor Taste?

As it turns out I will be the MC at this year’s Christmas party for where I work. When the news spread that I would be in front of the board, children, people with sensitive stomachs, I was deluged with reminders from people that I should watch what I said. Good advice I guess, but let me share a few jokes that didn’t make it into the final. You can tell me if they are in poor taste…..

One of the hardest things about growing up dirt poor and next to a funeral home was that no one wanted to visit. When no one came over to visit we didn’t get any “pity gifts” that we so readily accepted. The main problem from this was that we had no sleds, no toboggans, no way to slide down the hill except on our scrawny butts wearing jeans that were so worn we would get hypothermia in about 30 seconds.

So our solution was to raid the funeral home at night and grab a few bodies after rigor mortis had set it. If we tried really hard we could shape them a bit, making a seat for your sister out of a dead man’s arms is truly one of life’s unknown joys.

Now was that so bad? Maybe it was funnier in my head, and in person the presentation is much better… Let’s move on.

I’m not sure if you all heard about the crematory in Georgia that got busted for not actually torching the remains of their clients. They would instead dump the bodies in the lake out back and give the grieving relatives an urn filled with dust bunnies or what not. Anyway there was a big hubbub about this, and the place was shut down and the bodies were pulled out of the water….and then burned. I have tried igniting wet wood at times when camping and it is pretty rough, I can only imagine that a wet, dead person isn’t exactly going to flare up too fast.

Anyway, I got to thinking that instead of dredging up the bodies that were so ingloriously laid to rest in a lake, it could instead be used as a parenting tool. Imagine the possibilities when a little boy asks his mother why there are so many dead people at the bottom of the swimming hole.

“Mommy, why are there decaying bodies on the bottom of the lake?”

“Well, Timmy, those are the remains of those who didn’t wait an hour after eating before swimming!”

Now that is funny….

Fritz

1 comment:

a pain in the back said...

Dead people are funny.

No, really.

I will have to post on my blog some of the many funny things that occurred on and around my Grandfather's funeral.