I have a friend who reads the entire newspaper. Every section. Every word. He's a high school teacher, so he has the time. Anyway, one day, when we were working at a ballpark together, after he told me that he reads every word of the paper because he pays for the whole paper, I asked him if he ever read the obituary section. He told me that he did.
So every time I see him I ask him who died.
And the sonofabitch never remembers.
Anyway, I ran into him last Friday outside my office. He was there on business, so he didn't have much time to talk, but I still jabbed him with the ole' “who died?” joke.
And he responded, “My dad.”
I thought he was kidding at first, but well, he wasn't.
Today I read about it in the obituary section of the paper (okay, so I have the time, too), and I thought, “well, that's not very funny.”
And then I started laughing.
I don't even want to know what this says about me as a human being.
So I called him up and offered him my condolences, thinking that he probably wouldn't want to talk to my insensitive ass ever again.
After I offered my condolences, he said, “I'll bet you feel like a stupid son of a bitch, huh? You laughed when I told you my dad died.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I thought you were joking. My bad.”
“No apology necessary,” he said. “In fact, I laugh just thinking about the whole conversation. When you finish pulling that foot from your mouth, we should grab a beer.”
“Cool,” I said.
I don't even want to know what this says about us as human beings.