Almost every day I go to the news on Yahoo! to see if there is anything strange happening that might merit my attention and might be something about which I would want to comment . When there is nothing in the headlines, I dig deeper and read stories that are sub classified as “odd.” Usually these stories are pretty funny without my having to editorialize, but in the last week, the stories have been vaguely morbid. The one about the lady getting the finger from Wendy’s doesn’t strike me funny at all. Other stories have been about soccer players’ mothers being kidnapped and held for ransom and how anti-Semitism is making a comeback in Turkey. Then there is the one from Italy about some kids on a motor scooter setting off some fireworks that resulted in an explosion and someone was killed. It is hard to imagine anything funnier than that.
So, it is probably going to offend some of you that I am going to make light of a fatal industrial accident, today. Sometimes our best defense against tragedy is to look at it as a lesson.
A long time ago on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, there was an episode in which Chuckles the Clown (whom if memory serves was dressed as a peanut) was tragically and fatally mistaken for exactly that by an elephant and terminated. Mary’s colleagues made jokes about the incident to the displeasure of Mary.
Well, my story is about a tractor driver near Prague who somehow put himself between his eight ton load of manure and the ground and was buried by his load and died. The first thing I thought about was a textbook written by a former professor of mine named John B. Bremner, in which he cited a newspaper headline on a story of a man who was trapped in the pit of an outhouse when it collapsed. Fortunately, for that gentleman, there was a happier ending, but the headline said:
MAN, INTERRED, FOUND STILL ALIVE
Unfortunately for the Czech tractor driver, the turds under which he was buried were less forgiving. And, in a way, his job is a lot like many of the jobs I’ve had in the past and probably like ones you've had, too.
It’s like, your boss gives you a load of crap, and it’s your responsibility to turn this crap into something useful. But this load of crap starts weighing down on you and pretty soon it starts to stink to high heaven. Then your boss shows back up and starts to bitch at you because you haven’t got the load of crap taken care of yet and tells you young Smith and Jones would’ve had it taken care of by now, because they are a couple of go-getters who can really handle a load of crap. So you start asking yourself how young Smith and Jones would handle this situation, which is a mistake because deep down inside you know for sure you can handle it better than them. Then you make the mistake of walking around the load of crap, just to get your bearings, and for some reason (you knew better than to do it), you walk under the load of crap and it falls on top of you. As you take your last foul-smelling breath, you are figuratively kicking yourself for being so stupid, but it is too late and you’ve made the final, fatal error.
Smith and Jones have a drink together in your memory and they tell each other that they are going to be set by the time they are your age and they are not going to get into the same situation you did. But you were Smith and Jones, once, and you looked at your seniors and said the same thing. Someday Smith and Jones will walk right into the same trap you did and the same eight tons of crap will inter them.
“Well, Jimbo,” many of you are saying, “We fail to see the humor in this.”
You are right, of course. I guess the moral of the story is if you have a pile of shit to handle, try to stay on top of it rather than let it land on top of you and always keep the wind to your back. And if your boss starts giving you trouble, tell him you aren’t going to take his shit anymore. And, if he tells you that if you feel that way, you can leave, just make sure that pile of shit gets inside his Lexus before you go.
Because in Jimbo’s world we want to make sure everything goes where it will do the most good.
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