Anger of the Stupidly Dead

Barney Kimble’s death was quick and relatively painless. A staunch opponent of the “click it or ticket” approach to forcing people to wear seatbelts while in their automobiles, he practiced what he preached. But, he never preached being propelled through the windshield of his pale blue ’92 Subaru and smashing his skull against a utility pole. It happened in a rainstorm, after an evening in a bar, and involved a deer. But, that’s not important anymore.

Now, Barney frequents an establishment where he made all new friends—the Purgatory Bar and Grille, known as the PP&G to its patrons, “the stupidly dead.” It was a simple concept, really, and one that Barney, never one to overthink the hereafter, had never even contemplated when he was alive. The PP&G was a holding room for folks who died under stupid circumstances. With some notable exceptions, most weren’t bad people—they were just involved in stupid situations that ended their lives.

At the PP&G, you could find the young, the old, the famous, and the infamous from all walks of life from all over the world from every period.

Over there in the corner sat the pitiful Calvin Coolidge Jr., the 16-year-old son of old “Silent Cal,” the 30^th President of the United States. Young Cal’s stupid mistake was playing tennis at the White House without wearing socks. The tremendous blister he suffered became infected, and, well you know what happened before antibiotics were invented.

At the bar, in full armor no less, leaned Phillipe Marquard, a humble soldier in the French Army of 1540 who, through a spectacularly noisy act of stupidity, spawned the Shakespearian term “hoisted with one’s own petard.”  A petard was a cubical wooden box jammed full of gunpower and used to blow off the doors and gates of enemy strongholds. Sent to fetch a petard from a dark arsenal tent, young Phillipe set a torch ablaze so he could see which petard to use. You don’t need more information.

Ricardo Espinoza, originally from Ecuador, sat playing cards at a table and hoped desperately for his luck to change. Ricardo became a patron of the bar and grille after he searched for a good Wi-Fi connection on his phone and leaned out too far on his fifth-floor balcony. He never got the connection he was looking for.

Sammy Kim Park ordered a Mountain Dew from the bar while playing with a fidget spinner. Sammy’s mistake was playing a video game called Star Craft for 50 hours straight. He died of dehydration and heart failure.

Allan Pinkerton, the famous 19^th century founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency sat cleaning his fingernails with a dangerous-looking dagger. In Chicago, Pinkerton had been walking his wife’s dog when he became tangled in its leash and then tripped over a raised crack in a sidewalk. Upon impact with the ground, he severely bit his tongue, which became infected with gangrene. It led to his demise. He didn’t talk to the other patrons.

You get the idea. They were all members of an exclusive club— “the stupidly dead.”

These and other patrons of the bar took an immediate liking to Barney, who told a good tale, fell for their practical jokes, and expressed the proper amount of empathy when people told him how and why they died. All that changed as suddenly as that deer appeared on the highway the night he went airborne through the front of his Subaru.

The payphone on the wall of the bar rang one evening as a precursor to Barney’s fall from grace at the PB&G. Isadora Duncan, the famous dancer, answered it. She was a patron because she died of a broken neck in 1927 when she chose to wear a scarf that was so long that it caught on the rear axle of her car. The other departed souls watched her eyes get big as she listened intently to the speaker on the other end of the call. She hung up the phone and turned to face the rest of the room.

“That was the guardian upstairs,” she said, the anger building in her voice. “Barney, he wanted me to let you know that your appeal was successful. There are some new Libertarian members on the board who decided that refusing to wear a seat belt was a right, not an act of stupidity after all. Plainly, you are NOT one of us.”

Widespread muttering ensued among the stupidly dead and angry eyes flashed Barney’s way.

“Wait. You have no cause to be angry with Barney,” acclaimed lawyer Clement Vallandigham shouted. Clement defended a man in a murder trial in 1871 and accidentally shot himself in the courtroom while demonstrating how the victim might have shot himself. Clement’s defense was more effective than he expected. The defendant was acquitted. Clement was not so lucky.

“I presented Barney’s appeal. Choosing not to abide by what could very well be an insipid law that infringes upon his freedom is not, in itself, an act of stupidity. He doesn’t belong here not because he didn’t die stupidly, but because it was a stupid law that made him do so.”

But, the stupidly dead did not agree, and they started to turn on old Clement too until he told them he only took Barney’s case because he lost a bet on a PB&G dart game.

One by one, they turned their backs on poor Barney. No one spoke to him, smiled his way, or even acknowledged his presence from that moment forward—except for Adolf Frederick, the departed King of Sweden who had a special favor to ask of Barney.

Adolf left life in 1771 after consuming a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring, and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert.

“My dear Barney,” Adolf began. “Might you see your way clear to do me the favor of sending us some roasted goose when you move on to the next station? We can’t get it here and, although it has only been 246 years, it seems like forever since I’ve had a decent leg.”

Barney, deeply hurt by the reaction of his new friends to his good news, remained stunned.

“Wait,” he said ignoring Adolph’s request. “You can’t be angry with me. None of this is my fault. I’m not stupid. I’m a freedom fighter against unfair regulation.”

Qin Shi Huang the first Emperor of China who died in 210 B.C. after taking mercury pills in the belief that it would grant him eternal life, just rolled his eyes.

“That’s not how it works,” said Basil Brown, a health food advocate from England who, in 1974, drank 10 gallons of carrot juice in ten days causing an overdose of vitamin A and a nasty amount of damage to his liver. “You made a stupid choice like everyone else here and you can’t cloak it in politics.”

“The hell you can’t,” barked Adolph Hitler who was a patron because he was…well…Adolph Hitler.

“That’s enough,” said Sergey Tuganov. Sergey had bet two women $3,000 that he could keep them happy all day in the sack. His mistake was taking a whole bottle of Viagra to assist him in his challenge. He died 12 hours later of a heart attack. He always claimed he won the bet.

“Barney, whether you died stupidly enough to be one of us or not, you sought a reversal of your stupidity ruling and are no longer a patron of this establishment. No one recognizes your rights here. Good day sir.”

Barney waited a long time for the Hereafter Lyft service to pick him up for his next destination. During that time, the patrons ignored him.

Gina Lalapola, an Italian stripper who suffocated inside a sealed cake while waiting for a bachelor party to commence back in the 1990s, risked the wrath of the stupidly dead when she whispered a special request to Barney as he waited by the door.

“Please sir,” she said. “Can you put in a word for me? I don’t belong here either. It wasn’t my fault. How could I have known I couldn’t breathe inside that cake? I’m not a baker. I’m not stupid. I’m an artist.”

Barney just shook his head and went outside to meet his ride.