On the way back from Tim Hortons^TM I was almost run down by a short bus. Paratranspo to be exact. While I proved nimble enough to avoid it, the near miss was harrowing on several levels. Aside from the universal aversion to being run over, there was a flash awareness of the ancillary negatives of being laid low by this particular vehicle; the intolerable irony of my body being mangled by the chariot of the lame. And how I could feel their crippled shameful joy, that I might soon be amongst them…like a crew of damned and handicapable pirates (1) eager to pressgang me into eternal servitude, shackled to an oar.

Worse still, were I to die, was the awareness that the colorfulness of my death would fuel decades of sick humor amongst my friends and ill wishers (2). I could hear their smug, winking, conversations at my funeral:

“Oh did you hear how it happened? He was run down by a short bus when he darted across the street for no reason. Tragic that he couldn’t dodge a transport driven by a retard(3); some athlete he was.”

Then they would laugh and try and disguise it as a mournful sob.

The whole thing brought to mind how important it is to die in the least dignity stripping way manageable. As a courtesy, between friends, I present you the Ignominious Death Scale. That you might arrange your own demise accordingly.

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Earlier this morning a co-worker confessed that he was ashamed of a mistake that he’d made on his last call. When I pressured as to the exact level of shamedness he proved unable to quantify it. I dearly wanted to savor his sweet disgrace, but the lack of precise measure put me off my feed. It’s thus that I come up with an exact scale of shameful occurrence…that one might accurately convey how low they have fallen.

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