THE ANECDOTES ARE GOOSED TRUTH
My cousin sends along the latest hilarious nominations for the Darwin Awards which are handed out in some mysterious way each year to celebrate the latest deaths by stupid people who cause their own destruction.
It supposedly all started around 1985. I am sure some rewrite man collected all the stupid death stories that trickle out like congealing blood during the year and then regurgitated them in some pretend contest where the winner gets nothing but a grave stone and the runner ups remain just an embarrassing story to be related in shocked whispers at family picnics.
There is now a web site, an annual book, and plenty of copycat versions where the truth is strained to the point of incredibility.
Some of the latest: the guy stealing a pop who pulled the machine over on top of him; the light plane that crashed into another because its occupants wanted to moon the other plane; the chap who drank gasoline and milk in a weird attempt to get high cheaply, and then blew himself and his sister up when he vomited the concoction into a fireplace.
I love the stories in a cynical way because I know they generally have been embellished and one or two resemble vaguely some of the dumb things that I have done...fortunately with no witnesses.
What drains some of the humour out of the pretend awards is I know all about one of the famous winners from years ago. That victim was not only very nice and very smart but he was surrounded by very nice and very smart people.
He was the lawyer who used to run across the conference room and throw himself against the window 40 storeys or so above Bay St. to illustrate to the gawking articling students at his prestigious law firm that thanks to building codes and smart builders, this was not a dense thing to do.
Except one year during the annual stunt the window broke and he fell to his death.
Wow! Really stupid, right! And thanks to the Darwin Awards ritual, there isn't a nook in the Americas where they haven't heard the story.
Well, let me tell you the other side. The guy was so bright that he was a brilliant engineer as well as being a lawyer. He was so popular and clever that his law firm quickly put him in charge of all the kid lawyers that they hired, and his death occurred during a party that he held to welcome the newcomers.
Did you know his family sued the building and collected? So they had money to go with wonderful memories of a gentleman who stood out from the crowd.
Not that they were hurting for cash. His widow was one of the major municipal official in Canada and then chaired the faculty council of the largest university while presiding later over major municipal agencies.
Nope, not exactly the victim or the family you would associate with the weren't-they-stupid prize, are they?
In the ocean of deliberately false info and careless misinformation that floods the Internet, with the stupid elevating of a congenital liar to be U.S. president, with alternative facts being invented as a notorious expression and then actually invading our language where a fact should be a fact and not a political lie, the Darwin Awards have lost much of their chuckle because they can be as contrived as a standup comedian's monologue.
Next year one of the entries in this supposed competition should be a eulogy for truth, and fewer and fewer of us will laugh.
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