Screw the Obits

Don't deny it. You always read the obits.The big journalistic obits , not the small paid obits.(You possibly read the small ones too. Maybe you play the game I invented. You try to guess the age of the deceased from the photo. Sometimes there's a photo of a young pretty woman who looks to be about 20. Before you get weepy, you look at the hairstyle. If it looks like it was from a 1940s war movie, you know, without reading the obit, that the dead woman was around 100, and you save your tears. It's a bit harder to gauge the age with men, although a straight part of the hair--even on a 20 year old -tells you he's either your peer or your grandfather.).But, I digress. You read the big obits methodically. First, you look at the age. If they are your age or younger , you say "so young" and then wonder if they died in a freak accident or of a disease you might potentially come down with. Up to age 90, they are still "so young," but you're fairly certain an Alpine avalanche was not the cause of death. Next, you get to the meat of the obit: what they did to merit this gigantic obit. Here is when you're overwhelmed with emotion. Awe. Worship....and admit it, overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. This one saved 2000 Jews by getting them Guatemalan visas. Clearly , a saint. And you- you've done nothing for the Central American refugees at the border. That one won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Obviously, a genius. You got 100% on the chemistry Regents. Why haven't you won a Nobel or even washed a beaker? She wrote the seminal treatise on climate change. Patently, a forward thinker. You can't figure out recyling rules. He created Hustler Magazine. You, well, you have certain expertise...You could have done that. I know you will not abandon the obits, even though they make you feel as if you've wasted your life. So, I hope the following list of what I accomplished during the pandemic will give you some perspective. -I did not become fluent in either Swahili or Mandarin -I did not win a grammy for the best country song -I did not create a Trump meme -I did not learn how to code(or even what that means) -I did not discover a new element(and I know only eight of the old ones) -I did not write a book or even a blog -I did not learn how to cook -I still can't knit -I did not collaborate with Shonda Rhimes on a TV series -I did not help the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation For what I hope are two reasons, you probably won't find my obit in the New York Times any time soon. -