New England Off Suicide Watch as Patriots Even Record

WORCESTER, Mass.  Richard “Richie” Guertin is a shift manager at a fast-food restaurant along Interstate 290 in this, the second largest city in New England, a role he says translates to that of the proverbial “chief cook and bottle washer.”  “If somethin’ needs doin’, it’s me gotta do it,” he says as he spies a teen-age employee looking at his phone.  “I didn’t study restaurant management for two semesters in junior college to be stuck doing this,” he says as he jams a fistful of paper napkins into a dispenser.


True Worcester cuisine.

 

For the past week, however, Guertin’s job has included a graver concern than condiments and grease traps–the prevention of suicide.  “We took away all the plastic knives and forks and replaced them with sporks,” the non-lethal eating utensil that is manufactured in nearby Clinton, Mass.  “I wouldn’t want to have the blood of a distraught, overwrought Patriots fan on my hands,” he says, as he flips through a dog-eared copy of “30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary.”


Spork:  Impossible to kill yourself with it.

 

Guertin is referring to the fact that the five-time Super Bowl champion professional football team that plays its games in Foxborough, Massachusetts, entered the fourth week of the season with a disappointing 1-2 record, leading public health officials to call for a six-state-wide suicide watch to prevent excessively-entitled Patriot fans from killing themselves in despair.  “I have nothing left to live for,” read a draft suicide note written by Norm Aubuchon, a 28-year-old life insurance salesman, obtained by the Massachusetts State Police.  “Give cousin Mikey my collection of Tom Brady knick-knacks, and little Caitlin my Giselle Bündchen footie pajamas.”

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“We . . . lost . . . to the . . . frickin’ Detroit LIONS!”

 

Aubuchon’s was one of many potential suicides being closely monitored here following the Patriots’ loss to the Detroit Lions, a perennial doormat whose principal notoriety beyond the state of Michigan is its annual loss of a game played on Thanksgiving Day before tryptophan-rich turkey induces sleep among males.  “The New England Patriots give meaning to yeoman farmers who would otherwise live lives of quiet desperation,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, a Massachusetts sage who died shortly before the merger of the AFL into the NFL.

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Thoreau: “Take the points on the road.”

 

Professional grief counselors hired on a standby basis were discharged as the game clock counted down the final seconds in the Patriots’ 38-7 win over the previously undefeated Miami Dolphins, but team officials said they would remain on call in case of possible future catastrophes.  “In a situation such as this you can never be too careful,” said Dr. Linda Sentri of MGH-Brigham-Pilgrim-Vanguard-Dunkin’-Harvard Partners, the region’s sole remaining health care provider following a series of mergers.  “Giselle could dump Tom or they could lose to the Jets.”

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