Even if it’s not tragic, it can be very difficult to give bad news to some people. My mother-in-law is one of those who goes into complete conniptions if she even hears that someone in the family has a cold. “Oh, I couldn’t sleep whole night, thinking about dear Sally being sick,” and so on. We generally avoid telling her anything unpleasant, and will avoid visiting if we have the slightest thing wrong.
Several years ago after my husband had an emergency cardiac bypass, my second thought was “Oh, Lord, how am I going to tell his mother he just had open heart surgery and make it not sound serious?” I told her he’d had a bit of a problem with a blood vessel, so they operated and fixed it and he was going to be fine in a couple of days.
Beauty, it’s best not to try to line up your sentences. Just type it out without hitting enter at the end of the line. It will wrap and look just fine.
As for me, my mom is really weird about stuff like bad news. She never gets it right how I’m going to react–apparently she thinks I’m fragile, too. So she sent my brother to tell me my uncle had been in a near fatal accident, broken his neck and might never walk again…then insisted he drive me over, thinking I’d be too upset to drive. Um, no. She also reamed my dad for leaving me alone after he’d told me my grampa had died. I guess she thought I’d be distraught. Upset and sad, yes, and I cried, then when he left I went back to sleep (worked nightshift at the time.) So I guess she’s the opposite of these people who drop bad news like a bombshell.
Not to make fun of anyone’s personal tragedy, but if you’re on the outside looking in, there can be unintentional hilarity.
Some years back, my sisters and I were together on New Year’s Eve. At one point in the evening, one sister was in the kitchen while my other sister and I were watching whatever New Year’s Eve party was on TV. They broke in with a bulletin that famous music star X had been killed in a plane crash.
My sister and I both yelled into the kitchen, “Come here, on the TV they said X has died.”
From the kitchen my other sister yelled back “So what?”
“But he DIED!”
“I never liked him, anyway.”
Finally she finished in the kitchen, came back to the TV and was horrified.
“I thought you were saying 'on the TV, he’s LIVE!”
This reminds me of my one of my favorite Red Dwarf Scenes:
LISTER: What was that?!
RIMMER: Brace yourself for a bit of a shock, Lister, but I just saw you die.
LISTER: What?!
RIMMER: I did warn you to brace yourself.
LISTER: You didn’t give me much of a chance.
RIMMER: I gave you ample bracing time!
LISTER: No you didn’t. You didn’t even pause.
RIMMER: Well, I’m sorry! I’ve just had a rather nasty experience. I have just seen someone I know die in the most hideous, hideous way!
LISTER: Yeah! Me!
Oh, I don’t hit enter at the end of each line; I let things wrap. But I modify the wording of a post so that the entire post has some sort of symmetry to it. Sometimes, with multiple paragraphs, I try to make it so that the last line of each paragraph ends at about the same spot, or creates a “slope” or something.
(I modified a few words in the above paragraph so the end of each line ended at about the same place.)
Here’s an example of my “quirk”. Using the names of the months to represent paragraphs, here’s how a post might look…
July
May
June
April
March
August
October
January
February
December
November
September
Yes, I have problems. :rolleyes: No one has to break the news to me.
I was on a movie set the day Chris Farley died (well, the day the story broke anyway). I didn’t see the beginning of this, but others filled me in:
Scene: Craft service (the table with coffee, snax and so forth). Production assistant returns from a run.
PA: Hey, I just heard on my car radio. Chris Farley died.
Griptician: Oh man, that sucks. He was funny.
Hairdresser: Who died?
PA: Chris Farley.
Hairdresser: Oh, that’s a shame! [beat] Was it drugs or his weight?
PA recaps news bite. Meanwhile, actor walks up.
Actor: Who’s that?
Griptician: Chris Farley. They’re pretty sure it was an OD.
Actor: WHAT?! You’re kidding, right? Wait…wait…you sure you don’t mean Chris Rock or somebody…well, he wouldn’t…Chris Farley? Oh my god… [breaks down]
The actor was an acquaintance of Farley’s; obviously not a close enough friend that anyone called him personally to inform him of the death, but close enough to react as I described. Since then, Mr. Rilch and I have vowed, whenever on set, to always let other people break bad news about performers.
Also, Mr. Rilch is an avid Trekker. When DeForest Kelley died, I was at home, and called him on set. I didn’t want him to hear it first from some PA who might make a “He’s dead, Jim” crack.
