Are you Dead Yet? 

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“Are you dead yet?” 

“No.” 

“Isn’t this great?” 

“No.” 

How many of us know a “No” character? How many of us know someone who scrunches up a face and says, “You like life? What the heck is wrong with you?”  

No one says that, of course, but they’re dark. They’re so dark, it’s almost as if they’re obsessed with death, and I’m not just talking about goth customers of Fantas Magoria either. I’m talking about relatively normal people living normal lives who focus so much on what they consider the big circumstantial matter that they fail to put enough focus on the little, tiny stuff that could make their little lives more circumstantial.

Those of us who enjoy life, often find ourselves at odds with “No” types.

“I want a happy death.” I would advise you to make the most out of life you can before you die. That might lead to a happier death. “I just put a bundle down on a sound-proof, fully insulated casket on a plot that is as far removed from traffic as I could find. I had to put up with the sounds of traffic in life. I don’t want that in death.” They talk about death as if it’s sleep, as if the sounds of traffic might prove so annoying that it will intermittently wake them from a peaceful death. Nobody knows anything about death, except that it is a final punctuation mark. Once you’re gone, you’re gone.  

We shouldn’t care how this “No” character chose to live his life. Even though we needed him, we shouldn’t care that he wanted it over. He didn’t care that we needed him so much, and he didn’t really want to be remembered. He just wanted it over, for about thirty years he wanted his life over. He chose to live those thirty years in a manner that he thought should be rewarded, but he didn’t really pursue the idea that he should make the most of the gift of life. He just didn’t think that way, but he was a good man. Should we really care how or why he became a good man?  

What if this man wanted to hurry up and get his life over with, so he could join his beloved wife on the other side of pearly gates? What if he never found his life particularly rewarding, and he wanted hurry up and get his reward for living a good and virtuous life? What if there is no afterlife? What if his whole reason for living the life he lived turned out to be untrue? Is it untrue? We don’t know, but it seems like such a waste of life.

They told us there was an afterlife, but who were they? They were writers inspired by God. What does that mean? All writers are inspired by another author, especially at the beginning of their career, but how much does an author inspire what another writer writes? At what point does the writer take over and leave their inspirations behind? The only facts we know with 100% certitude, at this point in history, is that life exists on Earth, and it will end at some point. This might prove disappointing to many, but this could be it for us. 

We’re not supposed to question Them. Why? Why were we created with such intellect if we weren’t supposed to question them, Him, or the teachings inspired by Him? If our creator was so narcissistic that He didn’t want us questioning him, why didn’t he give us the intellect of the chimpanzee? Did He make it a sin to question Him, or did His inspired writers write that questioning them was a sin?   

“I’m not taking any chances. I’m living my life right, just in case.” Again, nothing wrong with that, but even if your quality of life was diminished by her death, you still have something she doesn’t, life. You are here now, and we need you. Why not live the life you have left here on Earth and let matters take care of themselves? Death will come soon enough, and once it does, whatever happens, you’ll likely be banished from Earth.    

If there is an afterlife, will we look down, up, around, or back on our life on Earth with regret? Will we wish we would’ve lived better or different? Even if Heaven, Summerland, Nirvana Celtic Otherworld, or Valhalla are the paradise we’ve been promised, will we be as happy as we’ve ever been, or will they provide us a moment to look back on our life on Earth? If they do, will we finally see how substantial and special life was?  

Life is not a minor inconvenience on the path to something greater, as far as we know. Or, if it is, we should not focus on that idea so much that it begins to impede on our life on Earth. What if the guardians at the gate inform us that life was the reward or gift? 

If we don’t enjoy life for what it is, because of the poor choices we’ve made, we should consider changing it. Some might require a complete overhaul, but most only need a few subtle tweaks. If we’re so unhappy in life that we begin looking forward to death it might be time for a change, before it’s too late, because once you’re gone, you’re gone.  

The fundamental, overriding philosophy of his life was that life is but a comma. I couldn’t articulate a proper response to this at the time, but if were granted enough time to ask him another soul-searching question, I would’ve loved to ask him, “If we’re looking for punctuation marks to define the life we lived, wouldn’t we love it if our loved ones applied an exclamation point at the end of our sentence? You suggest that you don’t want to take any chances that there isn’t an afterlife, and I appreciate that, but what if you applied the same rationale to the beforedeath? My guess is, if there is an afterlife, you’re going to find that the only punctuation marks are question marks, and the final answer to those questions will be that you focused too much of your life on death.”  

What happens at the moment of death? Some say it’s the unceremonious end of a life. There’s nothing more. There’s no soul and no afterlife, and if there’s anything to the idea of rebirth, it can only be found in the manner weeds and worms use our carcass for nourishment. We will die one day, as the ground squirrel, the clover, and the elephant will? Life doesn’t last forever, and it’s our job to do the best we can with the 73.77 years we’ve been granted. 

Some believe our state of being doesn’t end, it changes. Some believe that the afterlife involves a literal transformation into something else. They call it reincarnation. They also believe that their souls have been reincarnated hundreds of times already, and they always trace the path of their soul through someone noteworthy and glorious. Most people were Julius Caesar during the height of his rule in a previous life. No one looks back to see themselves as a vulgar peasant who was forced to commit atrocities to survive. What if, as a result of the life we lived as a human, we come back as a grub, or a dung beetle? Will we have any consciousness of the life we lived before? Will we know that this is our reward/punishment for the life we lived, or will our consciousness of life be as minimal as the dung beetle’s?    

Various religions believe life on earth is but as stage, as opposed to the stage. These religions teach us that this is not all there is, and some of us take great comfort in knowing this. That comfort bothers others, because some are always bothered by comfortable people. They suggest that most religious doctrine almost seems centered around a marketing strategy to attract the angry, sad, and uncomfortable people who need hope.   

We all know the Christian version of Heaven and Hell, but the various Pagan religions have Summerland, the Celtic Otherworld, or Valhalla. They also have their own versions of the Christian purgatory, in that the unsettled soul moves from being to being until it learns what it needs to know to enter the promised land. Most religions share the view that this life on Earth can’t be it. 73.77 years on earth, and we’re done? It can’t be. We’re human beings. We’re the top of the food chain. We have emotions and intellect that should be utilized by a greater force. If the controlling force(s) allow us to dissolve to dust, it just seems like such a waste of life.  

Some other philosophers suggest that it’s possible that through our psychic energy that we’ve created a promised land, through the rational if God doesn’t exist, there might be a need to create Him. We created the internet through our collective intellect, and the metaverse, and the omniverse, who’s to say we couldn’t create our own afterverse composed of dead souls congregating for the rest of eternity? We created this reward for ourselves, because we’re too important to the universe. There’s got to be more than this. What if there isn’t? What if this is it?  

My aunt passed away, or she thought she did. She looked up and saw a bright light. It moved her to tears, until her daughter informed her that it was the examination room light. The sweet smile on her face diminished, and she felt dumb when we giggled. The doctor arrived in the room minutes later, diagnosed her, and they treated her for the next week. She was released from the hospital, and she lived the rest of her remaining years disappointed. One might think that such a near-death experience might wake a person up and lead them to live a better life than the one they lived before the experience. She didn’t. She experienced what she thought was glory, and she lived a life of disappointment and routine in the aftermath.  

What if we had such a spiritually moving experience? Researchers suggest we continue to live 2-20 seconds after death. They say that we experience a surge of electricity in our brain in this brief time span. Other research suggests that dreams can last 50 seconds, but that the average dream only lasts about 15. With both of those theories in mind, we can guess that this surge of electricity in our brains can make an after-death dream feel like one of the most powerfully surreal dreams we’ve ever had. We might feel more alive than we ever have after our death. We might even call it an afterlife experience.    

We should hold no grudges or superiority over intellects who focus on the afterlife. Better minds than ours believe in the phenomenon, and dumber ones believe that we become nothing more than worm food … if we don’t purchase the proper casket with the best insulation technology has to offer. Some label the former superstitious, others mystical, but whatever we call it, it’s not an indicator of intellect. 

I don’t know if there is evidence that could end this debate, but what if we received concrete, irrefutable evidence that the afterlife did or did not exist? Would this lead us to live better lives, or would a sense of hopelessness increase? Would we enjoy our lives more in the aftermath? If there is no afterlife, we’ll never regret how we lived. If there is an afterlife, we might regret how we lived. What difference does that make to you now though, I ask these “No” characters.  

He believed in a deity. He believed in the Christian God. “Why do you think he placed you here, on Earth? What’s your purpose? I doubt He put you here, or any of us here, to live for the promised land.” A literal interpretation is that the promised land is a promise He made to those who make the most of life on earth. Obsessing over that promise almost seems to me a violation of the contract. My guess is God loses patience with those who obsess over death and an afterlife. My guess, if God chose to bring this debate to a close, is that he’d say, “Do everything you can with the greatest gift I ever gave you, life. Death comes soon enough for everyone and everything, and when it does, you’ll know what happens.”   

The Trials and Triumphs of Danny MacKinnon

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I heard that Danny MacKinnon used to be a no good kid just like the rest of us, until his dad took his life over. I was sitting next to him in some intro level, required Geography class, when he leaned over and said, “How can you like those losers?” Those were the first words he ever said to me. He said it in reference to the Atlanta Braves jersey I wore, number three, Dale Murphy. “I don’t know how anyone can like them, and “The Murph””, he said with a sarcastic tone, “The Murph can’t even tie Pedro Guererro’s shoes.” Danny was obviously a diehard Los Angeles Dodgers fan who tried to prove their superiority through statistics. The type of statistics he threw at me were those only a true baseball nerd would know. A guy drops competitive hatred lines like those on a fella, and two things will happen. Fellas either throw down or a competitive hatred/friendship is born. For us, it was the latter. We exchanged notes, “The Murph goes three for three with a homer and three RBI’s, and Pedro strikes out twice, 0-4,” was one such note I scooted across the desk. We whisper, talked baseball for the rest of the year, until an unusual friendship, indigenous to young men developed. I wanted to hang out with Danny, outside Geography class but he was always too busy. I began to think Danny MacKinnon might be something of a snob.

“He’s not a snob,” a mutual friend said. “He is busy, too busy. His dad booked his whole life up. There was an incident in high school. No one knows what happened, but there was an incident.”

Danny’s mom won the wars in the MacKinnon household, prior to the incident. She wanted her boy to have fun in life, nothing more, and “He doesn’t like sports as much as you do Tom.” She fought her husband on many issues she considered crucial, and she won those wars. “Life is short,” she said to him in many ways. “He will only have one childhood. He will only go through high school once. Let’s let him enjoy it,” she said. Danny was special. He was their only boy, and she accused her husband of wanting to live vicariously through him.

No one knew what the incident was, but Tom MacKinnon took charge of son’s life after it. We could only guess that the incident was a small and relatively insignificant incident that Tom used to win the wars in the MacKinnon household. Some of us guessed that the incident was one of those bad road incidents. The type of incident where no one gets hurt, and there’s no damage done, but it suggests that a teenager might be headed down the wrong road. We assume that Tom decided the best way to prevent his child from going further down that road was to book his son’s whole life up. He probably thought the best way to prevent Danny from going down a bad road was to prevent him from having free time or leave him so exhausted that he doesn’t have the energy to go out with his friends.

Whatever the incident was, Danny was implicated, and it prompted his dad to stop volunteering to work overtime to engineer his son’s life. Tom MacKinnon became the coach of his son’s basketball teams, his baseball teams, and his flag football teams. In doing so, the man discovered he had a talent for coaching young boys, and he continued to work as an assistant coach for Danny’s high school teams, when time permitted. When his kid wasn’t playing organized sports, or doing homework with his dad, he was practicing, and when he wasn’t practicing he was lifting weights, jogging, and playing pickup games with neighborhood kids in the local park. After high school, Danny’s immediate future was mapped out. He received a division II, college scholarship for basketball, and he was able to choose a school well-known for turning out bright engineers. His whole life was mapped out until another incident happened, before he could take one step into a classroom or a basketball court for the college. The second incident was a freak accident that involved a forklift and sheet metal on a Summer job.

His doctors warned him that his future was grim. “I didn’t even know what the word grim meant,” Danny said, “but I really didn’t have to know. All I had to do was look at my dad’s face and hear my mom’s tears to understand the gist of this word grim.”

“You should’ve lost complete functionality of your legs,” the MacKinnon’s primary physician said with a specialist in his background nodding, and an x-ray of Danny’s legs further back. “You didn’t, and in the grand scheme of things, you should consider yourself lucky.”

“What does lucky mean?” he asked with disdain.

“Well, you’re not going to consider yourself lucky in rehab,” the specialist added. “If you complete the regimen we’re prescribing, you’ll gain more functionality, but that’s a big if. With you being a top-shelf athlete in our state, we give you a better than average chance of completing the rehab, if you show the same grit and determination that you displayed on the court, but that’s still a big if. It’s up to you Danny. We’re not going to sugarcoat this, even if you complete the rehab in a spectacular manner, you’ll experience various levels of pain in your legs for the rest of your life. You’ll also experience moments, with your legs, that will forever alter the life you knew before this accident.”

Even with those warnings, Danny MacKinnon was not what anyone would call a model rehabilitation student in the beginning. He spent some of that time feeling sorry for himself. Who wouldn’t? Prior to the incident, Danny MacKinnon was considered a top-shelf athlete in the state, and no matter how many second opinions they received, Danny was told his plans for an athletic future were over.

“There’s so much damage here,” a second specialist said, “that if you listen to your physical therapists, and you excel in your rehab, you might eventually regain enough functionality to walk without a limp. I’m not going to kid you though, Danny, it will be a test of your resolve to reach that point. Most people don’t.”

That wasn’t enough to get him going either. He was awful to the physical therapists and their assistants, and he made their lives miserable.

“I was a little bitch,” Danny said to characterize his first few weeks. “If I couldn’t play sports, I really didn’t want to do anything else. I went into a full-fledged depression, because I couldn’t accept the idea that everything I spent my whole life doing prior to that awful day in September was dead and gone. The mental rehabilitation was much more grueling than the physical aspects of it, but I eventually reached a point where I buried the old Danny MacKinnon and decided to give birth to a new one. I can’t remember if I came up with that idea on my own, or if one of my physical therapists thought it up, but I eventually shocked my doctors by achieving a level of functionality just short of what fully capable people take for granted. I’ll never have a normal gate pattern, but I can now hide my disability so well that most people who don’t know me, can’t see my limp, or my struggle to appear normal.”

I wanted more details. Everything I heard about the incident was secondhand, and if I was ever going to write about it, I wanted primary source information. I thought Danny MacKinnon’s story needed to be told. I thought his story might prove to be an inspiration to others in similar situations in life, but when I called him to ask him for more details, Danny MacKinnon didn’t have the in-depth answers I was seeking. I initially thought this had something to do with the idea that the horrible accident happened so many years prior to our phone call that he either forgot some of the details, or he wanted to put it all behind him now that he was a successful podiatrist, living a full happy life. I also considered the idea that he wasn’t a reflective person. Throughout the phone calls that followed, in which I asked him questions that I thought up after our first phone call, both of those characteristics played a part in Danny’s answers, but the central driving force of Danny MacKinnon’s inability to define his miraculous recovery lay in the idea that he was just a doer.

“Was it painful?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“The rehab I mean.”

“Yes it was painful,” he said. “Every day, every exercise was a new test of the pain threshold.”

This man of few words said he did what his therapists told him to do. Back then, some therapists used scream therapies. They got in your face and screamed you into more reps. He didn’t like his therapists, and he grew to loathe them, but they helped him achieve what they said would buckle an overwhelming majority of those suffering similar injuries.

Danny MacKinnon eventually became a model student. He used the athlete’s mentality to overcome overwhelming odds, but he didn’t analyze anything he did. Even while immersed in the physical and mental rehabilitation, he apparently didn’t analyze the steps in the process in the manner I would’ve. It’s the difference between doers and analytical and reflective people. Reflective people build narratives to a point where they imagine how a local news network might report on it. Whereas a doer might sum up everything they do with a line such as, “Life deals you some twists and turns, and you have to deal with them when they hit you.” That was how Danny summed up his inability to give me what I wanted.

Danny switched from dreaming about playing college basketball and eventually becoming an engineer, to dreaming about a life as a physical therapist, to dreaming about becoming a podiatrist. He told everyone he knew that he wanted to do for others what the physical therapists did for him, and he thought his story might stoke the fires of any patient who stood precariously over the fault line in the manner he did. When I asked him why he decided to switch to podiatry, he said, “Somewhere along the line, I switched.” He made a couple jokes like, “I think I saw how many hot girls were in podiatry, and I decided that’s for me.” I laughed, but I heard too much about Danny MacKinnon to think he would switch careers over something that silly. It might have been sarcasm too, because I couldn’t think of any female podiatrists, but I’m sure there are some.

Over the course of a couple years, he built a successful practice in a small town, and his friends said he put as much temerity and resolve into building that practice as he put into his athletics. He turned into a substantial, serious man, and that’s when it dawned on me that Danny MacKinnon simply forgot why he switched careers. I don’t know if the Danny I met, after years of separation, was so busy, so happy, or so fun that he didn’t think too much about any of the life-altering decisions he made, but I think he genuinely forgot why he made those decisions. I think he also forgot why he was so driven to rehabilitate himself and the little details of how he drove himself. This may seem improbable to anyone who doesn’t know Danny MacKinnon, but I think he forgot the finer details of his life. He wasn’t particularly humble and nothing he said over the years led me to believe he was an egotistical man. He was just a just-the-facts-ma’am type of guy. These characteristics were such that while I didn’t think he would ever trumpet his accomplishment in an egotistical manner, I didn’t think he would shy away from giving me details either. He just forgot the details of a story that I would’ve told everyone I knew about them so often that they would have tired of hearing them. I might’ve asked that these details be be chiseled into my gravestone if I had to endure them. Danny MacKinnon forgot them.

“You could inspire others, suffering similar incidents,” friends might say if it happened to me. “Your inspirational story of overcoming the odds could appeal to healthy and unhealthy types. People love stories like these.”

If someone suggested that I sell my inspirational story to a Reader’s Digest, I’d have a story like this one typed up, printed, and in the mail the following Monday. I would be so proud of my ability to overcome the odds to walk again that I might even embellish the story to have my “I” character walk onto a court one more time to sink one ceremonious, jump shot in a college basketball game. Danny MacKinnon’s story is not a Rudy tale. His injuries were just too severe. If one were to provide in-depth details of Danny MacKinnon’s incident to a specialist who never heard of him, they might be better able to tell us what a miracle it is that Danny can not only walk without assistance but he helps anyone who suffers similar problems.

The idea that the gist of Danny MacKinnon’s story ended with him becoming one of the most successful podiatrists in his area might be what keeps his story from being After School Special material. How does a screenwriter make a man examining the x-ray of his patients’ feet a dramatic conclusion? It’s not the exclamation point at the end of a story most writers seek. It’s more of a period to those who have never heard skilled specialists inform us that the prospect we’ll ever walk again are grim, “or if you do, it will be excruciatingly painful.” To those of us who know the details of what this teenager had to overcome, and what this man still deals with and will have to deal with for the rest of his life, it is a story we feel compelled to tell anyone who will listen.

As inspirational as Danny’s tale is to those of us who know some of the details, it pales compared to story we think he could’ve told if he remembered more. If he kept a journal of his daily travails, the progressions of his mindset, and the motivational techniques he used to get through the day, we think he could’ve written a motivational best-seller. Danny simply forgot the necessary details he would’ve needed to make his story feel more complete.

“How could you forget?” we asked him.

“I just did,” he said. “I guess I just didn’t consider the details as important as you do.”

When Danny MacKinnon fell out of line with an incident in high school, his dad took control of his life. He drove Danny, like a drill sergeant in the Marines, to be the type of kid who had tunnel vision. He basically took Danny’s identity and image away from him and gave him a new one. That mindset probably drove Danny to become a top-shelf athlete in his state, and that same level of intensity later drove him to overcome the odds and achieve surprising levels of health. If it’s true that Danny MacKinnon was a no-good kid like the rest of us, before I knew him, and he was as directionless as the rest of us, then perhaps the greatest gift his dad unknowingly gave him was a relatively freakish level of tunnel vision that we could all use in our lives.

Enjoying Other People’s Pain

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Tedious. The guy is tedious. He doesn’t even know it. He thinks he’s hilarious. He thinks this is his big moment. He probably thinks this moment on stage is the big break he’s been waiting for his whole life. Shouldn’t we always think that? Yes, but he thinks this is a stepping stone to a bigger, better life. Someone probably told him he was funny. Was it his Aunt Clara, or his dad? Who told this guy he was so funny that he should step on a stage and try to make a career out of it? I’m not funny, so I’m probably not the best critic, but I know what I think is funny and this ain’t it. I know the plight of the unfunny, but this guy? The idea that this guy has a bright, gleaming smile on his face makes it obvious that he thinks this is his moment in the Sun. He thinks he’s doing it. He thinks this might be the best day of his life. “Except for the birth of my children,” he might add, “and the day I bought Herschel the Turtle at a pet store, and the day I met my wife.” He’d probably qualify that best-day-of-my-life assessment, so no one calls him out on it, but he’d probably say it was top-5 … if someone stopped him right there in the first quarter of his standup routine.   

How many people can do this? I wonder, while trying to drum up some respect for this guy. What percentage of the population can stand up on a stage and try to make complete strangers laugh? I respect anyone who can do what I never could. He told us he traveled twelve hours to be here tonight. He traveled half-a-day to try to make a roomful of strangers laugh. That’s a level of commitment that most people don’t have. It’s one thing to try to make a table of four laugh, but a comedy club requires its patrons to pay a two-drink minimum to enter. How many people could stand up to try to make a roomful of demanding, paying customers laugh? I mentally applaud this guy for doing what he’s doing, but I can’t get past the fact that he’s just not funny.  

The audience is receptive at first. At first, they’re laughing at everything he says. Why are they laughing? My bet is they’re aching for comedy. It’s why they’re here. Most of them probably bought their tickets weeks in advance, and they looked forward to it all week. They convinced their girlfriend, wife, brother, or friend that this would be an excellent idea for a Friday night. They bought the tickets for the headliner, but they’re more than willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, if he’s halfway decent. What if he did something edgy? What if his act involved nothing more than eating a bowl of Count Chokula? What if he performed a dramatic reading of Dr. Seuss’ ABC book or The Great Gatsby? Would they still be laughing? To us, he has a certain position of authority on humor, because he’s up there, and we’re not. We assume he’s played a number of cities before ours. We assume that he’s up there, because other people more knowledgeable than us put him up there, and he’s been thoroughly vetted. He’s doing something none of us could do sober, so we defer to his experience. Is that why they’re laughing, because I find this guy typical and tedious. 

I was so immersed in these thoughts that I missed the audience turn. The laughter went from a throng to sparse. What are you laughing at? I thought to those few still laughing, this guy’s not funny. While I searched for the laughers, I failed to notice that they were some of the few who were still laughing, until they stopped too.  

The standup comedian was baking under an uncomfortably bright spotlight when that silence took hold. The silence was deafening and a little claustrophobic. Prior to the turn, he informed us that he traveled half a day for the chance to make us laugh, and he added some typical, tedious notes to that, and everyone laughed. That was his attempt to build familiarity with the audience, and to infect them with the laughing bug so they might follow him into the unfamiliar. They didn’t. 

In the now deafening silence, I thought about that twelve-hour drive, and how it must’ve been filled with such excitement. I figured he must have quickly clicked his cruise control in, because he knew his excitement would cause him to violate speed limits. He probably thought his appearance in our small city would kickstart his dream of being a standup comedian. I wonder if that trip involved any concerns about about how quickly the best day in your life can turn into your worst. Twelve hours is a long time to spend in a car, alone, with nothing but your thoughts, your excitement and your worst fears.

He resembles Weird Al without the looks. I see myself in this man. I see his observations. I know where they’re headed, but they don’t quite get there. There’s something wrong with his delivery, and his material. Members of the audience are now cringing at one another. They’re as uncomfortable as he is, I think. I chuckle. He drops another tedious joke, and I laugh harder. His material hasn’t changed, but his delivery has. He’s in pain now, and I’m close to guffawing. 

He had a few self-deprecating jokes that hit home in the beginning. He opened with a few jokes about being unattractive and overweight. He joked about how grateful he was that a woman decided to become the wife of an overweight, unattractive man. They laughed. Little by little, joke by joke, silence began to rear its ugly head, until it became obvious the poor man was baking under the spotlight. I was one of the few not laughing in the beginning. Now I’m the only one who is. Various members of the audience began twisting around in their seats to see who is laughing.  

I laughed because I saw him sweating. I laughed because I saw him trying so hard that he was trying too hard. I laughed because he was drowning, and he was not doing some kind of meta routine on failure. I laughed, because I realized I knew we were watching a man’s dreams come crashing down around him. I laughed because I knew I was witnessing one of the best days of his life turn into his worst nightmare. It was fascinating to watch. It was captivating.

“What’s the opposite of empathy and sympathy?” I asked a friend, in a discussion involving this peculiar morbid curiosity we have for enjoying other people’s pain. When he didn’t answer straight away, I added, “Sociopathic, psychopathic? Is it narcissism? Whatever it is, I have it.”    

“It’s evil!” he said. “We’re not evil, but we have a little spot of evil in our hearts. You know how some people say they have a soft spot in their hearts for something about a person, place, or thing? Yeah, we have a hard spot in our hearts.”

That was such an insightful comment that I couldn’t help but think he put a lot of thought into it, but was it true? Kind-hearted, sympathetic and empathetic men do not enjoy watching another man squirm in pain. I don’t rubberneck on the interstate, hoping to see some guy screaming on a stretcher, and I don’t enjoy seeing other people cry, but I love watching the worst part of an otherwise healthy, normal man’s worst day. What’s wrong with me? Have I been conditioned by the comedians who almost appear to enjoy bombing? Andy Kaufman, David Letterman, and Norm MacDonald turned bombing into an art form. They almost appeared to get off on it. MacDonald said he didn’t care if an audience laughed or not, as long as it was a good joke. That was his charm. Chris Elliott personalized the Kaufman/Letterman element and created a career out of it, based on the idea that no one would purposely subject themselves to the level of self-deprecation and debasement he did that would result in ridicule and embarrassment. Did they plant seeds in my brain that anything embarrassing, uncomfortable, or cringeworthy is some form of lowbrow entertainment that is so low that it’s considered high art? I didn’t get that, until I did. Once it clicked that it’s schtick, it stuck. Once I got it, I couldn’t wait to proclaim to the world that I got it. I understood it, until I understood it to the point that I now consider it hilarious to watch another man squirm under the bright spotlight of a small city’s comedy club. 

It’s not schtick for this man however. He worked hard on this material. We can feel it in his transitions that this isn’t some form of meta material with highbrow commentary on the plight of man. We can hear him nix some material, lose his place, and worry that he frontloaded all of his best material. We can hear him worry about his performance while he’s talking. He’s lost faith in his material, in himself, and his ability to turn this around. I laugh harder. I have the giggles. I can’t stop. People are staring. The other comedians in the comedy club are giving me looks. I compose myself, until I analyze the comedian’s face deeper. His pain is so obvious that I imagine this is what it might look like if I could see the expression of someone who just jumped off a building. I have the giggles again, but I’m controlling it better this time. 

Mercifully, the comedian’s act ends. The crowd applauds politely, and the comedian surprises me by mouthing, “Thank you!” to me. I didn’t know it at the time, but my friends later tell me that he began directing his jokes at me toward the tail end of his act. I saw him looking at me, but I didn’t think he was looking at me. They said he was. He, presumably, thought I was the only audience member who got it. I felt bad, because I wasn’t laughing with him. I was laughing at him.  

One excuse I could use to explain my behavior is that I find the unfunny hilarious. Perhaps I relate to this comedian, because I’ve been told that I have a decent pitch, and I know my beats, but my punchlines are so confusing that they’re not funny. Perhaps my laughter had something to do with the idea that I don’t enjoy traditional humor. I’ve watched too many comedies, sitcoms, and radio shows to appreciate what we call a traditional humor.   

It’s Letterman’s fault. He started it all for me. Letterman turned squirming into an art form. Letterman left us wondering how we could help him, and he answered by saying there’s no help for me. It made us so uncomfortable it was almost painful and hilarious to watch. It’s the joy of witnessing other people’s pain (OPP), and it’s David Letterman’s fault. I’d love to say that I believe that. I’d love to say that watching him on NBC for all those years had such a profound effect on me that I’m now conditioned to find OPP hilarious. How many years did he cringe with us in uncomfortable pain? I’d love to say it’s all his fault, but my enjoyment of OPP predates him.

***

In grade school, I just happened to have the perfect angle to catch Andy Parizek’s impact face, when he walked into a light pole. Some deep, dark part of me found his expression of pain so precious that I watched it over and over on an internal loop I developed in my brain. I wished I had some ability to draw, so I could create some product to memorialize this moment. Andy Parizek wore glasses, and the impact was so perfect that it broke his glasses in a clean break right down the middle. The pain was followed by a brief period of silence in which the good people around him tried not to laugh and further his pain. When those good people then moved in to comfort him, I tried to run away to a dark corner of the playground to laugh, but I didn’t quite make it. 

“How come when we get hurt, it’s so funny to you,” Mike Amick said, “but when you get hurt, we’re supposed to take it serious?” 

Is it evil to enjoy watching other people get hurt? Do we have a hard spot on our hearts for certain moments? We’re not evil, but is there something wrong with us if we enjoy it when another person cries during an argument? Is there a hard spot on the heart of someone who enjoys watching another’s dreams come crashing down around them? The fact that a grade school child’s assessment stays with me to this day should suggest that I’m still struggling with it.

When we discuss such things, some of us exaggerate the levels of pain involved. The incidents we’re talking about here are skinned knees, the guy who walked into a pole and broke his glasses in half, and a comedian who wasn’t able to make strangers laugh. Most of us have never seen anyone get truly hurt, and if we did, we probably wouldn’t laugh. Yet, it is a little deranged and morbid to enjoy watching another experience minor pain, regardless if that victim eventually finds a way to laugh about it. 

I’m a grown man now who manages to display kindness in the face of tragedy. When someone dies, I join the good people who express compassion, and sympathy. If I ever saw someone truly get hurt, I don’t think I would find their excruciating pain enjoyable. I know all kinds of physical and emotional pain intimately now, and I empathize when anyone endures minor physical pain, but after I tend to their wounds and make sure their okay, I still rush to that dark corner of the room to laugh my tail off.

Conducting corporate meetings is not in the same league with standing on stage before paying customers, but they gave me a taste of what this comedian was going through. When you’re conducting a board meeting, your material sucks, but it’s important that the employees know the material. It doesn’t matter that the employees know that they’ll be caught with their pants down when the situation in which this material arises, they’re so bored they can’t take it anymore. I’ve been on both sides of corporate board meetings, and I know one in one hundred are in some way interesting. In the hundreds of board meetings I conducted, I thought I had an interesting one once. It was a special subject I knew inside and out, I got a great night sleep the night before, and I think I ate something healthy. I was on, and I knew it. I dropped two or three jokes that I thought were pertinent, and I looked out in the audience to gauge their reaction. Two people were asleep, and the rest of the eyes in the room were glossed over. I had a small taste for what this comedian was going through, but that didn’t make it any less funny to watch him squirm and implode.

Anyone who laughs at other people’s pain knows they’re going to get theirs, eventually. We’ve all experienced some levels of karma, but we know that ain’t it. There’s more to come. We know it’s going to get us, and it’s going to hurt. We know there will come a day when we’re old and decrepit, struggling to breathe one last breath, and someone will find that struggle hilarious. We’ll probably yell something like, “What are you laughing at? I’m dying here!” in the heat of the moment. When our emotional hysteria subsides, and we don’t have the strength to fight death anymore, we’ll either acknowledge that we deserve it after laughing at so many others during the worst days of their life, or we’ll find humor in it too.