Random Bits… Obits

By Tim McGrath

There’s something about obituaries that’s like the punctuation mark at the end of someone’s life; it’s the final flatline of the recently passed. Yes, it says, this individual is really and truly gone. It’s something written by or about the departed highlighting the life they’ve lived, interests, who they married, kids, grandkids, siblings, parents, maybe some anecdotes of interesting or unusual things they did. And I must admit, I’ve taken to reading the obituaries to see if there’s anyone in there I know. Maybe this is some sort of rite of passage as we age. I don’t know really, but I do it regardless. It wasn’t always the case, however.

As a youngster, I’d get a kick out of Mom and Grandma as they went through the obituaries, “the obits”, as they called them. Every Sunday, my grandma and bachelor uncle would come to our house after church for the big Sunday dinner. After the meal, the unveiling of the huge Sunday edition of the Grand Rapids Press would commence. Uncle and I grabbed the funnies, Dad got the front section, Mom the human-interest stuff and Parade magazine. Grandma always went right for the obits. Then the talk would start about who’d recently died, what funeral home they were at, when the funeral was. If the departed was particularly well known to either of them, the discussion about where they had or currently lived, who the neighbors were, what church they attended, who they went to school with began.  There might be some talk about why the funeral home the deceased was at was or wasn’t a good choice. “We’ve heard things,” was the usual answer I’d get when I asked about it. Perhaps if there was any knowledge about untoward or scandalous behavior about the dead person or family members, that would be referenced, but quickly silenced as being unseemly. Respect for the dead and all that. There was usually some commentary about the photo of the deceased; what side of the family did they look like more, mom’s or dad’s? 

A couple times I heard a name I was familiar with and would wander over to look at the obit with Grandma out of some odd sense of curiosity. I remember asking why the photo of this obviously very old person showed someone who had just graduated from high school, or an old military photo. “Well, most likely, they didn’t want people thinking of them as old, sick, and wrinkly.” “But they were old, sick, and wrinkly,” I’d reply. “Timothy Jay, that’s enough!” Grandma or Mom would scold. Despite the reprimands and severe looks, I still wonder that when looking at the obits. There, smiling out at us, is a person on the cusp of adulthood, even though they were very long in the tooth.

We all know most things have a lifespan. In addition to us, plants, animals, things microscopic and unseen all die. Things manmade, all gone eventually. It can be quite a sobering reality. But why dwell on those eventualities?  Instead, I’d like to suggest we draw our attention to things in the here and now that should have their own obit; in other words, things that really need to go away, pass on, cross over, or any other euphemism you can think of. 

Let’s start with men, particularly older men. No, it’s not that we want older men to die off, but certain traits and habits that really need to go. Clothing, for example. Fellas let’s face it, any tight stretchy material we wear for shirts, is a hard no. Too many of us deal with the scourge and heartbreak of man boobs, and anything that accentuates that needs to pass away. Same with the twenty year or older coats, hats, boots, shoes, shirts, pants, shorts, socks, underwear. Yes, they still fit, are comfy, but seriously?

Ditto for toupees. Thank goodness the time for them seems to have passed. But recently I saw one on an older man who seemed oblivious to the fact that it resembled a large, dead, orange cat resting on his noggin. It was shocking to see. Perhaps he thought it gave him a youngish, hipster look. I have never seen one that looks good on any man. Maybe there are those that do, but in my experience, they look fake, and slightly cheesy. 

The good news is that being bald isn’t seen as a thing to avoid at all costs any longer. I’ll reference my late father-in-law on this one. When asked about his baldness, he’d stroke his hairless dome and proudly announce, “I like my bald head; it’s a solar collector for a sex machine!” I concur, so let’s go with that and put an end to toupees once and for all. 

And then there’s the matter of combovers. Never understood the concept. My dad had one. When he’d take off his cap, and a crosswind would come up, the lengthy flap would trail out at right angles to his head. No matter how often my brother and I would make sport of it, or my mother would try and convince him to let her trim it up a bit, he stubbornly clung to the long locks crossing over from just above his left ear to the other side.

Not long ago, I spotted the piece de resistance of combovers. I cautiously studied this creation from a polite distance, and noted how this man had transformed his bald head into a work of art. He had started in the back of his head just up from the hairline. He’d let the hair there grow to an enormous length. He then swept the flap of hair vertically up the back of his head, and up over the top. He had then carefully and thoughtfully swirled it around the top and front, sort of a hairy cinnamon roll. He’d even devised a clever way to create a part on the side. Very odd, but quite ingenious. 

But seriously men, combovers need to pass on, please.

One of the things that sets humans apart from other life forms is our ability to convey ideas and meaning through language. I’ve been dabbling with Duolingo for quite a while to become somewhat proficient at speaking Spanish. I’ve got quite a bit of vocabulary learned, yet when trying to put it all together and use it in conversation, I’m somewhere between beginner and barely passable. But take a newborn child, and within about a year from birth they are already learning and using their native language. And it’s not uncommon for kids to easily learn multiple languages in just a short span of time. Quite remarkable. 

Yet too often, something happens along the way between toddlerhood and the adult years. We see these proficient language learners picking up bad habits. Words and phrases that are mispronounced, or used incorrectly, for instance. These are things that need to croak, take a dirt nap, pass on. I know this could be seen as this old man just being persnickety, judgy, and uppity, yet these mispronunciations reflect poorly on the speaker. Look at it as my way of just making the whole human experience better. So, here’s a very short list of the mispronunciations I often hear from perfectly lovely and normal people that need to go away, forever, never to be uttered again.

“Supposebly” for supposedly, “flustrated” for frustrated, “expecially” for especially, “prostrate” when referring to a part of the male anatomy, “I seen” for I saw, “Chimbley” for chimney. You get the picture. And I’ll bet that it’s not just me. My guess is many people have their own pet peeve words that make them stop short and ask, “Did they just say that?”

Then there’s the TV ad that makes me holler out every single time I hear it. It’s on often. A certain auto dealer in mid-Michigan has a series of ads extolling the virtues of their dealership and the hundreds and hundreds of new and used cars they have on the lot, not to mention all the fun, fun, fun you’ll have just showing up there. In the TV ad, the main pitchman is clumping around the dealership in cowboy gear, or on horseback, yelling at us in a high-pitched voice to come on out and check out all those new and used Chevrolets and many other brands, too. But he doesn’t say “Chevrolet”. He says, “Shev-uh-lay”. Every single time. And every single time I yell back at him in my high-pitched, annoyed voice, “It’s Chev-ro-let”, not “Shev-uh-lay’! Will you please get this right!” To make matters worse, they also advertise on radio. Same thing, only sometimes there will be a female voice yelling at us in a furiously paced monologue urging us to “Come on over, pardners, you’ll be glad you did!” Mercifully, this person pronounces “Chevrolet” correctly.

Speaking of things on TV that need to die… 

As a kid growing up in the 50s and 60s, it was part of the TV landscape to watch countless ads for cigarettes. Anyone alive at that time could recognize the various brands and the jingles and slogans created to get them entrenched in the public’s mind. I imagine those of you alive in those enlightened days can still finish the slogans for these cigarettes: “Winston tastes good like a…; Tareyton, I’d rather…; I’d walk a mile for a….”. These ads promoted smoking as the domain of the beautiful, young, hip, robust, adventurous types bent on experiencing all the good things in life. And really, wouldn’t you like to part of the in crowd, too? Thankfully, these were outlawed in 1971.

But wait, there’s more!

And now there’s the onslaught of ads letting us know just how the beautiful, young, fun-loving, hip, and adventurous types spend their time. If you’ve watched network TV at all since 2019, when this became legal in Michigan, you know what I’m talking about, online gambling. Or to soften it a bit, online gaming. The ads are right out of the cigarette ads playbook from the 50s and 60s. And to make it that much faster to score the big win, we can point our cameras at the TV and get the QR code that will get us in on the action instantly. Fun, fun, fun! Yes, you too can be a big winner just like these people! But wait, don’t get too carried away! In microscopic print at the bottom of the screen is an attempt at some sort of moral obligation that cautions us to be responsible gamblers, and to call the hotline for problem gambling when we’re spending this week’s grocery money at their casino. Hmmm, makes me wonder….

And this being an election year, we are already being exposed to campaign ads on TV that are demonstrably misleading, or outright prevarications. Yikes, we’ve got how many more excruciating months of this to live through? Please, please, please to whomever is in charge, these must pass away, never to be seen or heard again. 
Fat chance.

When it comes right down to it, everyone and most everything dies: the good, the bad, the lovely, the righteous, the profane, the ridiculous, and the serious. The obits are a marker, a point of reference that acknowledges a life lived. Still, when my time comes, I’d like to add a bit of levity to my obit. I’ll reference a favorite cartoon of mine from Peanuts, by Charles Schulz. 

Linus asks his big sister, Lucy, to please read to him out of a particular book. Lucy in her peevishly exasperated way, finally agrees and grabs the book. “A man was born, he lived, and he died. The end.” She tosses the book over her shoulder, and stalks off, clearly miffed. Linus replies: “What a fascinating account…it almost makes you wish you had known the fellow.”

Amen.

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