The Afterlife

I’ve got a theory about life that seems pretty cuckoo, but I keep seeing things that make me think I might be onto something. For lack of a better name, I’ll call it the Cuckoo Theory. And it posits this: The currently-living exist to provide entertainment for the recently departed. In a sense, we’re just here to Pay It Upward.

Let’s say you’ve had a mostly good life, even if you don’t realize it. Good friends and family love; you never had to work for Donald Trump; you didn’t contract a flesh-eating bacterial disease. Sure, you had one gnarly divorce, but apart from that, a good run.

So you die. And you get to heaven, and your first question is “What was up with that marriage?” But God ignores you, and instead fires up a flat-screen TV. He turns to you and says “This is real, it happened yesterday in Florida.”

The screen zooms in to a pet store in Florida, where a contest is being held. It involves determining which customer can eat the most bugs in a short period of time. A row of guys sit at a table wolfing down worms, crickets, and the like. The winner raises a fist in triumph. And then dies.

It’s horrible, yes, but you can’t stop laughing. And neither can the contest winner, who’s sitting right next to you.

God smiles and says “That’s nothing compared to you duking it out with your Mother-In-Law. That was hilarious. We watched that over and over.”

The TV shifts to a video of the late, great comedian Ron Shock. He’s telling the story of the jet-skier killed by a duck. The people in the room with you howl with laughter. Ron chuckles and then says “You die, we laugh. That’s how it goes.”

God hands you a bucket of popcorn and, in his best Men’s Warehouse impersonation says, “We’ve got lotsa clips of your life. You’re gonna like how you look. Everyone else does.”

I really hope my theory is right. But I’m gonna try to avoid doing something that proves it is. That’s a job for other people.