Where’s
Granny? — an Inappropriate Life Lesson
for Kids
by Bob Iozzia
You know she’s
dead, right?
Other than that, no one still living can
conclusively say anything further. She may be
ashes in a mason jar on a seldom-used foosball
table in your Rumpus Room, ashes and bits of bone
in the stomachs of blow fish in the Atlantic
Ocean near Seaside Heights, NJ or decomposing in
a chipboard box buried beneath the mulch pile at
your local DPW. Or she may be an invisible ghost
that can play mean tricks on you because you
refused to kiss her after you told her she
smelled like a cat box.
One place she ain’t is Heaven.
“Why, Mr. Iozzia, did she do something bad?”
you might ask.
No, Phoebe. Cheating at bingo is pathetic and
petty, but it’s not an afterlife punishable
offense.
“Did she kill somebody?”
No, Tommy Jo Willie Bob Jimmy Luke, Jr. Making
people violently ill with her possum & peach
pot pie was pitifully careless, but was done
without malice or intent, and almost everyone
eventually recovered.
“Did she steal Sweet ’N Low packets
from a diner?”
Yes, of course she did, Shaniqua, but everyone
does. FYI, if everyone does something illegal, it
becomes a virtue and, after three years, it also
becomes a requirement, which means you have to do
it or the cops will shoot your puppy.
Granny may have been a petty, kleptomaniacal
embarrassment, but she’s not going to Heaven
for one reason and one reason only: as you may
remember, there is no such place as Heaven.
I know I said no one still living can definitely
say what happens to a person after they die, but
I think they don’t go anywhere—and I’m
pretty good at guessing (I once came within 1,500
of guessing the number of marbles in a goldfish
bowl). They just stay dead—even deader if
they are cremated, which means their corpses are
put into a really powerful Easy-Bake Oven that
nukes them to kingdom come.
The good news (not for her): if by chance Granny
was planted in the ground without a coffin, the
petty, kleptomaniacal embarrassment is a hero.
That’s because when her body is rotting, it
feeds trees and plants, which is good for the
planet, which makes her green. Hey, she could be
called Granny Green! I like that.
Unfortunately, bugs that can sting your eyes out,
animals that can chew your legs off and crawly
things that ooze and spit poison slime that can
burn holes in your skin like to hang out by trees
fertilized with dead people, which means you can
never pay your respects to Granny Green ever and
forever.
Oh, well. One way or another, it won’t
matter. You probably didn’t like her, anyway.
And even if you did, you won’t feel so bad
in a year or two when the world explodes and
there is nothing left anywhere, except, of course,
for cockroaches, which can survive anything. How
do they do that?
Have a nice day.
|
