The Worst Story You Will Ever Hear

One of my Facebook friends posted this to his timeline the other day:

"Thanks everyone. Tough day. When I was "running" on the GG bridge I was next to a guy wearing a Barca kit. As I started to pass him I said "Go Barca". He smiled and gave me a thumbs up. Then he sprinted ahead of me and up and over the railing. I thought it was a stunt and watched him all the way down. I wish I hadn't done that. Such a beautiful day.....and then it was so messed up. Be alive today, everyone."

Then one of our mutual friends wrote, "that's the worst story I have ever heard."

So, one of my friends watched someone commit suicide, and I clicked the "like" button. Was using the "like" button an endorsement of the suicide, or a validation of my friend's feelings? Hmm. I didn't have a meaningless platitude to offer, so I clicked "like."

What I wanted to do was ask why my friend made the guy kill himself. Maybe if he didn't say, "Go Barca," the guy wouldn't have jumped. I was also tempted to ask who the hell is about to commit suicide but is thoughtful enough to smile at people and give them thumbs up?

But what I really wanted to do was try and top his story. Because I took, "that's the worst story I have ever heard," as a challenge. I was thinking of typing into his timeline the following:

'I was walking on the Coronado Bridge today and saw a woman pushing a double stroller. Both of her kids were crying, so I offered, sympathetically, "kids, huh..." She smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up. Then she cackled, picked up the double stroller, and hucked it off the bridge. I thought it was an episode of What Would You Do? and watched the whole thing.'

None of that Coronado Bridge story is true, but it might be "worse," and it has been "heard." So that is my entry in the contest of "the worst story you have ever heard."

The following story is true, though. I was on the Amtrak from San Diego to Santa Barbara to visit my mother once. There was a long delay on the way. It was about an hour's delay, because someone jumped into the path of the train and killed themselves.

There was a woman near me, and we were all looking out the windows, trying to glimpse the incident scene, trying to figure out if we were going to get moving again soon. This woman said to her companion, "I can't believe that someone would be so selfish and kill themselves in front of the train. Don't they realize how selfish that is?" When the train started moving again, we passed the dead body, and I saw a male torso. It looked fake.

I always thought that woman had an interesting take on suicide, and kind of hilarious. But in a way, she was right. Committing suicide is selfish, and terribly inconvenient for everyone else. So is dying. I don't plan on doing either of those today.