100420- A joke

.....Okay, I'll admit it, I'm stuck for a snarky one-liner again. If nobody minds, I'm going to retell a favorite old joke of mine instead:

.....Three men wake up surrounded by clouds. There's a long line of people stretching out on either side of them. As ridiculous as it appears to them, every indication is that they've died and gone to heaven. Everything around them conforms to every corny movie and comic strip cliche they've ever seen. Cherubs are floating around, there's harp music coming from somewhere and off in the distance they can see walls of precious jewels and gates of pearl. "If we're really in heaven," said the first man, "that means we must have died". "Yeah," said the second man, "that makes sense. But I don't remember dying. In fact, I can't remember how I got here at all." The third man shrugged and said, "I can't remember either. But that would kind of make sense. None of us look as old as the people just before and after us. If we died at our age it was probably due to some accident. The mind has a way of protecting itself from traumas. Whatever's too hard to deal with, it just blanks out." "Hey, yeah," said the first man. "I heard about stuff like that. Multiple personalities and obsessions and junk. You don't think we got any of that?" The second man rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't worry about any of that. I mean, I've never met either of you guys, but we all seem to be pretty lucid, considering the circumstances... whatever they were."

.....The third man brightened up. "You know, we could probably help each other. If we're all here together, that may mean that we died within moments of each other. If our deaths were related in any way, we might only be blocking out our own deaths. We might still remember something about each other's." "That's kind of a longshot," said the second man, "since we could have died in different cities." "Well, we'll never know if we don't try.' said the first. " I don't mind going first. Even if it doesn't work, we've got nothing else to do while we're waiting in line."

.....The first man tries to recall: "I don't remember just which day I died, but for a couple of weeks, I had been suspecting that my wife was cheating on me. There were all kinds of hints, but nothing that was really proof, you know? Somebody else's shirt comes back from the dry cleaner, food missing from the fridge, dumb stuff like that. There could have been a bunch of reasons. Then one day I come home and notice an ashtray with a crushed cigarette in the living room. We don't smoke. I ask my wife about it and she said her friend Helen was over that day. She was really defensive about it. But, see, I know Helen and she's been over a lot and that wasn't her brand. And there wasn't any lipstick on this cigarette. I didn't say anything. I just let it go. But it was eating at me, every day. I kept wondering who it could be; was it somebody I knew? did she go looking for somebody? It was driving me nuts. One day, I couldn't stand it. I left work early and went home. When I got to the apartment, I took the stairs up and used my key on the door. The chain was on, but through the door I could hear voices suddenly stop. I called out that it was me, that she left the chain on and I needed her to open the door. Suddenly I heard a lot of scuffling and clattering. I asked her if she was alright, if there was somebody in there. She told me she'd be right there but it must have been at least another five minutes before she opened the door, wearing a towel and looking really guilty. 'What d'you want? I was taking a shower.' she said. I told her her hair wasn't wet and asked her if I checked the bathtub if that would be dry too? She looked pretty shocked. I guess she thought I was pretty stupid just because she'd been getting away with this so far. I demanded to know where he was. She kept pretending she didn't know what I was talking about. That's when I really lost it. I started tearing through the apartment checking every room, every closet, pulling out drawers, raving like a maniac. I kept screaming, 'Where is he? Where is he?' Then I noticed the sliding glass door that leads to the fire escape was open. It's right between the kitchen area and the living room. I rushed to it and looked down and sure enough, there was a guy sneaking down the stairs! I freaked out! The nearest thing to me was the refrigerator, so I grabbed it and started pushing. I was just burning adrenaline, my wife was screaming at me but I couldn't hear anything... and then... and then... I must have blacked out. I don't think you can die from a hernia, but pushing that fridge onto the fire escape must have given me a heart attack. Hey, I figured out how I died!"

.....The first man was so happy to have worked out the mystery he forgot how angry he had gotten remembering his wife's infidelity. The second man, however, looked angry enough for both of them. "What's wrong with you?" asked the first man. "Oh, I'll tell you what's wrong" said the second man. "I used to work as a meter reader. I used to hate reading meters in the city because you're supposed to be able to go into a building's basement and read every unit's meter at once. That would make it easy, but there's always someone tapping a line, trying to get free juice. So I gotta go up and down the fire escapes looking for illegal splices. One day, I hear some idiot screaming so I stop and look up. The next thing I know, a giant black rectangle comes zooming at me and... bang! Nothing. That's the last thing I remember before I wound up here. With you."

.....The first man looked furious. "You mean it was you?!?" The second man screamed back, "Me? You're the one who--" and the two began throwing punches and clawing at each other. An angel came swooping in from somewhere nearby and pleaded, "Oooh, stop! You must stop at once!" but the two men were absorbed in their scuffle. "You simply can't do this! There's no fighting in Heaven! It isn't allowed." The third man looked back and forth between the angel and the brawl until the angel sighed and pulled a lever only it could see. The clouds dropped out from under the fighting men and they plummeted downward and downward, their yelling gradually fading for what seemed like several minutes, punctuated by a tiny pinhole of flame below. "Oh, I so wished that wouldn't be necessary." pined the angel. "I tried to warn them. What a senseless, needless waste. They were even within sight of the gates! What could possibly make someone throw all that away?" The third man cleared his throat. "Well, we were all trying to recall the events that led us here. It must have brought up some bad memories for them. They didn't even get to hear how I died." "I've heard so many over the ages," said the angel, "I can't imagine how one more would surprise me." The third man chuckled, "Well, this is going to sound weird, but the last thing I remember is, I was hiding in a refrigerator."