It’s not a tomb-ah.

Well, not technically that is.

While others dig graves (I guess they are ok), I have always marveled at the marble of markers of graves: headstones (also known as tombstones or gravestones).

I was never a fan of being social. I preferred to spend most of my time indoors on the computer playing Oregon Trail. To be honest, I didn’t much care for most of the game. Banker, farmer, carpenter. Whatever. You’re all fucked when you try to ford, or even Chevy, the river. I didn’t care for Oregon. I didn’t care for the pioneer spirit. I didn’t care for enduring hardship or shooting muskets or conquering dysentery.

“Dear Diarrhea,

OMG. Today my guts left my body in one continuous, watery bottom burp. Not sure how I am writing this now.”

I just waited for a party member to die. When one died, others would soon follow.

Turd was killed by snakebite.

Jed Butthead was eaten by a wild hillbilly.

Kyle Pee stopped in Missouri to become a Mormon and was killed by religious zealots.

The unstoppable plague of death would inevitably lead to my favorite part of the game: writing epitaphs.

I could be as crass and juvenile as my hormonal brain would allow. The sky (or the gutter) was the limit. I was truly alive when my party was dead.

I rested in the satisfaction that years later, somewhere down the road, a bright-eyed naïve pre-teen would be chugging along and come upon the tombstone of a traveler bested by the tenacious trail:

“Here lies Cone Alone. Butt Butt Ass Poop.”

I am a puerile poet.

I am Cone Alone.

Peeking interest

More headstones than a Phish concert