As a Catholic, I *know * I am going to hell. Coming from a long line of superstitious Slovak peasants, guilt and despair runs deep in my veins. Sometimes, idly, I envision my personal version of hell. After refinement, my conclusion is this.
A cocktail waitress on an overbooked Disney cruise with Garrison Keillor droning on the PA system. With a bad case of the stomach flu.
Surely others out there have contemplated their eternal damnation. I am curious as to what everyone else’s hell looks like.
Being locked alone in a room with a telephone that only accepts incoming calls.
And that phone number being on every damned telemarketing/fundraising/political soliciting list right across the known universe. There’s no DNC list in HELL.
Hell, for me, is a never-ending 8th grade graduation ceremony. With the junior high band playing (off-key and off-tempo), and speeches by local Kiwanis and politicians, only the acoustics are horrible and the sound system is from 1947 so you can’t understand a word anyone says, and it’s crowded and hot and they never seem to run out of “Special Achievement Awards” to hand out.
Hell would be on an endless bus ride, forever surrounded by teenagers swapping their damned ringtones, talking at the top of their voices because, like, you know, we can’t hear ourselves because everyone’s talking at the top of their voices, like, y’know?
Copy editing incendiary, poorly written articles espousing beliefs I could not oppose more if I one day became the focal point of a lab exercise on self immolation protesting same articles.
(Sadly, this would–for some aspects of my work–only be more of the same.)
Stuck in the same room Fran Drescher and Roseanne Barr have an eternal screaming fight, while Billy Ray Cyrus tries to drown them out by endlessly performing “Achy Breaky Heart”.
Mine would be pretty normal, but all day, I will hear 12-year-old AIMers and crappy commercials all day long in my head. Imagine: “Freeeeeee Credit Report DOT Com! s0 1337 d|_|d3” Just the thought of it is enough to cause frothing insanity.
A crowded, confined place where everyone, including me, is required to smoke. All food items would include lots of cheese. There would be many mean drunks, but alcohol would not being solace or forgetfulness. It would be hot and humid. The lights would be on all the time.
I live in your hell right now. Only I have them all in my suburan death machine (the SUV), so I can’t even change my seat. I’m driving.
My hell looks like the DMV, or maybe the entry gates at Disney. There’s a sign that says, “Hell. Line Forms Here.” There are 3 lines. Two of them are moving along. Mine isn’t moving at all. If I switch lines, my new line stops moving, and my old line picks up. So I get to just wait. And wonder. And wait. And wait. And it’s hot. And the other people are close talkers, or they smell funny, or they’re just not nice (which, I guess, makes sense, since they’re in hell, too).
