My Biggest Fear

My biggest fear isn't dying- it's dying in a manner that my family and friends will secretly laugh about and that makes for awkward funeral speeches. Think about the show on Spike TV 1,000 Ways To Die. There are so many humiliating ways to die, especially if you're into weird shit. One guy, some mother's son, perished after he electrocuted himself by attaching car battery cables to his nipples. There's no doubt in my mind that after an initial mourning period, someone who loved him found themselves grinning at the thought of his demise. Could this be what the Barenaked Ladies were talking about in their hit song "One Week"? (#5 on the internal feedback loop for over 15 years)

"I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral, can't understand what I mean? You soon will."

Do we all have a guy like this in our lives, who needs only the faintest of pushes to start howling in laughter at a funeral? I believe we do and that's why I hope that if I die (yes- "if", considering medical advances), it happens after a long, bitter fight with a debilitating disease. Nobody will start a Giggle Loop over that (if you don't know what that is, get off G+ immediately and watch Coupling on Netflix). But you know what will? Choking to death on bug body parts after participating in bug eating contests in order to win a python, which is exactly how an asshole in Florida died last year.

Back to my original point- I'm scared to die comically because I don't want my family and friends to one day regard my death as any shade of humor, AND I want my funeral speeches to be heartfelt and full of love. How could that happen for a guy who choked on cockroaches? If I were his dad, my life's obsession would be to ensure that everyone in the world knows I actively discouraged that kind of behavior in a 32 year-old man...Here's how I think that would go at the funeral:

"I loved my son. He was a good man, curious about the world around him, and sometimes moved to the beat of his own......ah fuck it. He was an idiot. Do you know how many times his mother begged him to stop eating bugs? How many times I tried to dissuade him? His death isn't a reflection on how little we cared about his well being. Short of imprisonment, what more could we do? I even called in a bomb threat to the Catepillars, Centipedes and Craisins contest last year so he couldn't attend."

In conclusion, I want to die honorably. Falling on one's sword is no laughing manner. Unless you tripped. Then it's hilarious.