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Monday, April 6, 2009

Is The Shoe on The Other Foot?

Our postal workers are off the hook. Apparently the going occupation for the overstressed and ethically challenged loner career person in the South these days is mortician. I’m not talking about the solemn, well-dressed individual always ready to pull out one of the appropriate condolences he keeps handy in the breast pocket of his morning coat, and who is associated with a fine institution that has served us faithfully since the days when our granddaddies perished from reckless driving in the family wagon.

No, I’m referring to the type of guy whose day is so full of drinking clear liquid out of a mason jar and cleaning his ear with his pocket knife that he just doesn’t get around to cremating that day, so, as we all do, shoves his work aside says “to heck with it” and goes out to play in the sunshine. Unfortunately his work, having been dead for an uncomfortable length of time already, gets pushed to the corner of his desk and forgotten.

What’s a poor mortician to do? Why he simply pops the customer in a convenient hole out back until he gets a chance to do the proper thing. Sort of like filing, funeral director style. That’s what a mortuary in Georgia did a while back, and although it made the news when it got around, it sure saved a ton of money on matches.

The newest headliner is a thrifty South Carolina mortician who was faced with an untidy problem of a too-tall customer. Or a too-short place of eternal rest, it’s hard to say. Anyway, our handy free-thinking guy took matters into his own hands. He sliced the final resting feet off just above the ankles, tucked the whole package neatly inside the casket. Sort of an assembly-required overnight express delivery for the Pearly Gates.

The whole thing would probably have disappeared over the horizon like flexible bangle bracelets, Earth shoes, and any television program I vow to watch regularly, but in a small town a tale of removable tootsies is going to travel like it has winged feet, which is probably what this guy had once he got to heaven.

The rumors flew, authorities got involved, and the body was exhumed. There inside the casket, like a Mr. Potato Body with interchangeable parts was the customer. And available separately, were his feet.

Now that’s what I call thinking outside the box. From the inside.

2 comments:

David said...

I suppose it was better that he chopped off the feet rather than going to the other end and chopping off his head.

Nice touch in this comparing it to people "going postal".

Cheers

the Bag Lady said...

OMG - you have a valid point - morticians have been overlooked for years now as far as their potential for going 'postal' is concerned!

The strain must be getting to them - we've had a similar occurrence up here lately, too! One of the funeral homes in a small town is being investigated for slap-dashery.... cremating the wrong bodies, burying the wrong people in the wrong graves!
It's a disturbing trend....

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before one of them stages some sort of blitz; attacking a crowd, armed with formaldehyde and who-knows-what other deadly chemicals!

Thanks for the warning. (Have you notified the authorities?)