Never Enough

I read "The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened" by Don Robertson when I was thirteen. My dad took me to see "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" about that same time. To suggest that this was my introduction to mortality would be a lie. At that age, I was already very aware of the Sword of Damocles. I wanted to know how it was all going to turn out. What happens when you shuffle off that mortal coil? I was fascinated by the fates awaiting doomed characters like Morris Bird III and Randle Patrick McMurphy. If there had been Goths in 1975, I might have been one. It suited my introverted personality, and since black is generally thought to be slimming, the wardrobe might have helped me out, too.
As I grew older, I came out of my shell a bit, and it became harder to maintain the shadow of gloom that I had maintained in the seventies. I tended to teeter back and forth from being the life of the party to a wounded soul on a path toward "the truth." That worked well for being a liberal arts major, but once I graduated, real life seemed much more rooted in the daily routines of life. Where we went when we died was a question that got pushed to the back of my mind as I focused on going to work every day and paying the cable bill. The novels of John Irving kept the Under Toad alive for me, along with the admonition to "keep passing the open windows." I learned to hold off those nagging questions of death by making a life for myself.
Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper, and now Chris Haney. You may not be familiar with Mister Haney. He's not the guy who sold Oliver Wendell Douglas a tractor on "Green Acres," but rather one of the creators of the game Trivial Pursuit. Haney and his collaborator Scott Abbott gave me hours of enjoyment and superficial self-esteem by giving me a game at which I could excel. When I heard the news of his passing at fifty-nine, I was stopped cold by the news that the creator of Trivial Pursuit had died. Was this some sort of cosmic joke? If it is, I hope this is only the setup, and the punchline is still a long way off.