David Jett Explains Dumb Traditions

Now a yearly tradition.

In the fall of 1997, Susan Hendricks was walking in the woods behind her house. She stumbled upon her dead husband. Rick Hendricks had been dead for several days. Someone had taken his body to the woods and placed him in a large box. Makeup had been smeared across his face. Susan went back to her home and gathered her two children, Maggie and Tyler. She knocked on neighbors’ doors and implored them to come with her. The Hendricks family and this group of friends went back to the woods, formed a line, and one by one, they walked up to the dead body and quietly stared at it. One of Susan’s neighbors, a real estate agent named Ted, sang a somber hymn. Susan’s children, not quite understanding what was happening, cried as they were led by their mom up to the dead body.

I made up that whole thing. But that’s what a funeral is.

The tradition of a typical funeral is one of the weirdest damn things I’ve ever seen. Here’s the thing: there are many traditions that people take part in every day without ever questioning why. They just know it’s what’s always done. I don’t accept that. My brain instinctively looks for the logic in any situation. So, let’s take a look at some dumb-ass traditions that have outlived their usefulness and we’ll start with funerals.

FUNERALS

I don’t want to see a dead body. This isn’t fucking Stand By Me. I would much rather attend a wake. Family and friends gather to tell stories and celebrate the life of the deceased, not to awkwardly stagger up to a dead body that has been slathered with more unnatural makeup than any contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Anytime I’m at a funeral, all I think about is WHY ARE WE ALL STANDING IN A ROOM WITH A DEAD BODY??? Geez, the whole thing is creepy as fuck.

Then there’s the tradition of burying the dead body in the ground. If you watch a lot of cowboy/mafia movies/tv shows, there’s always a part where someone gets killed in the middle of nowhere, the is being are being pursued, but they take the time to bury the body. Dude, the guy’s dead. He doesn’t care. Leave it there and get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak. Now, I’m not saying we should just leave bodies in the middle of the street for stray dogs to play with, but having a funeral and burying the body is such a racket that the surviving family members could go into serious debt. I think all bodies should be donated to science or cremated, both of which take up a lot less real estate. And here’s the big upside: if a dead body is cremated, there’s no body to rise from the grave during the zombie apocalypse. Use your brains, people, before they get eaten.

I was one the people who spoke at my father’s funeral. I made a few jokes about my cousins, I told some funny stories about my dad. No reaction at all. Just a crowd of relatives sitting in morbid silence. Afterwards, there was a gathering at my aunt’s house. All of a sudden, relatives were coming up to me talking about the stories I told and offering some of their own. They were laughing and celebrating my father’s life. Why did they not react this way at the actual funeral? I’ll tell ya why: CAUSE THERE WAS A DEAD BODY IN THE ROOM! It’s hard to have any kind of fun with a dead body in the room. Just ask some of my ex-girlfriends.

SHAKING HANDS

What a load of horse shit. Why do I want to touch a body part of someone I just met? Answer: I don’t. Maybe if the rules were changed a little, I might find it more acceptable. Like if you were meeting the CEO of a potential client and she was a woman, you could honk her boob and it would be a sign of respect. I would be down for that.

The origin of the handshake goes back thousands of years and was a sign that you meant no harm. It was literally showing that you had no weapon in your hand. You would think that at some point in history, someone would say “hey, we don’t walk around with pistols or swords in our hands anymore, so we can probably lay off the handshake stupidity.” Nope. That’s never happened. People continue to shake hands even though no one (except for the disgruntled) is bringing a gun to a business meeting.

The best thing about Covid it that, for a tiny sliver of time, people stopped shaking hands. It took a literal chance of death to put a pause on this dumb tradition. But bros couldn’t wait for the first “thumbs up” to start shaking hands again.

Why is shaking hands so accepted? What sense does it make to touch someone you just met. I don’t like to be touched unless it’s in a romantic way. Or maybe a friend giving me a hug when I’m down. Other than that, WHY DO I HAVE TO TOUCH ALL OF THESE PEOPLE? Most of whom I don’t want to touch in any way. What if when you met someone, instead of a handshake, you take your hand and put it on their face like you were Spock doing a Vulcan mind meld. People would think that is weird. How is that weirder than a handshake?

If the handshake wasn’t stupid enough in modern times, frat boys trying to be alpha males developed two variations: the high five and the fist bump. The idea behind the fist bump, in the mind of the guy initiating it, is that he is being cool. (He’s not.) He’s thinking, “hey, we do the handshake thing, but I’m a cool guy so I’m going to fist bump to let you know I’m a cool guy.” (Again, he’s not.) I’m actually a cool guy. I’ve made a lot of cool friends in my lifetime. None of us want to fist bump. Wanna know, why? Cause fist bumping isn’t cool. It’s desperate. A fist bump is taking a handshake and adding the element of “hey, I’m not some old dude, I’m a hip dude! Please think I’m hip!”

There’s a weird handshake tradition among professional wrestlers that really ups the weird factor. It’s a tradition that if you are a professional wrestler, and you walk into the locker room for the first time that night at a show, you must walk around and shake everyone’s hand. It’s seen as a sign of respect and older wrestlers get highly offended if you don’t do this. So you walk into the dressing room and there’s the Undertaker, half naked and taping up his swollen knee. Maybe he just rubbed baby oil all over his body. Maybe he just spread some hemorrhoid cream all over his broken-down ass. And now you have to shake his hand? Fuck that noise. Undertaker can get as offended as he wants. Wrestlers are such pussies.

GOD BLESS YOU WHEN SOMEONE SNEEZES

This tradition started when people were dumber than they are now (relatively.) Morons thought that when you sneezed, your soul was attempting to escape your body. Thus, when you sneezed, someone would say “God bless you” so that you would not lose your soul. This was probably around the time doctors used leeches. We now realize that sneezing is less your soul making a run for it and more you having a pollen allergy. So why do people still say it?

First of all, it’s kind of annoying. So, I’m at work and I sneeze. Someone says “God bless you.” Now all of a sudden, I have an obligation to say “thank you.” Maybe I sneeze a second time. Here comes another “God bless you.” Now I have to say “thank you” again. The whole routine is a pain in the ass. I’m just sneezing. Please leave me alone.

And why don’t people say “God bless you” when you cough? It’s the same thing as sneezing except from another orifice. Sneezing and coughing is just your body trying to expel some irritant (definitely not your soul.) What about if I’m a little gassy and I just let one rip. Shouldn’t I get a “bless you?” Maybe my soul is trying to escape out my butt.

And what about the “God” part of this. I’m agnostic which is atheist adjacent. It means that I don’t 100% rule out there being some higher power or spiritual connection, but I don’t believe in God the way that’s it’s presented. I also don’t believe in Zeus, Thor, or Groot. I don’t have a problem with people being religious or spiritual or dancing nude in the forest, or handling snakes, or whatever voodoo you gonna do. Most of my issues are with organized religion (I’m looking at you Catholic Church) but that’s a discussion for some other time. All I’m saying is that since I’m agnostic, the phrase “God bless you” means nothing to me. You might as well be saying “Batman bless you” or “Harry Potter bless you.”

THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

Throughout my entire elementary and high school education, everyday I stood at my desk, looked at an American flag hanging at the front of my classroom, and joined my classmates in robotically reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. As I grew into an adult and attended college, I looked back at this and thought “what the hell was that Hitler youth, indoctrination bullshit?” I just couldn’t see the logic and/or need to pledge my loyalty to the United States of America on a daily basis. I love my dog but do I stand up straight, look at her doggie bed and say a pledge to her everyday? No, she knows the score.

Let’s take a logical look at the pledge. Let’s pretend you live in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Maybe one of you does.) How would you feel about starting each day by pledging allegiance to Scottsdale? You would say, “get the fuck outta here.” You just happen to live in Scottsdale. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t. Maybe you just live your life there, adhere to the laws, and contribute to society. Maybe one day you hope to move to St. Louis. Anyway, if cops came by your condo every day and forced you to pledge allegiance to Scottsdale, you would be moving up the calendar on going to St. Louis. Let’s zoom out in the map some. Scottsdale is in Maricopa County. Would you ever think about pledging to Maricopa County. No, of course not. Zoom out more and think about pledging allegiance to Arizona. Nope on that. You can live in a place, maybe you don’t even like that place, but you aren’t trying to overthrow Arizona. Zoom out some more and you get the whole country. Now you’re suppose to pledge. Can we zoom out even more, cause I would probably pledge allegiance to Earth. Unless, Mars offers me asylum and then I would have to reconsider.

I am not currently and don’t plan on conspiring with a hostile foreign country to overthrow or damage the United States of America. That’s a job for our politicians. BAM! Ok, I just live here. I think there are countries that are better than the US. There are some that are worse. But I’m not doing some idiotic pledge like I’m a warrior in Braveheart. And to what exactly am I pledging? The country that massacred Native Americans and stole their land? The country that imported actual human beings from Africa to be slaves? The country that freed the slaves, but then segregated them and treated them like second class citizens? The country that made them drink from separate water fountains and made them ride in the back of the bus? That country? It’s like if you worked on the Death Star and were forced to pledge allegiance to Darth Vader. You might do it so he won’t dark force you to death, but you and your buddies would be saying “Hey, I was all about pledging allegiance to Vader, but that thing he did to Alderaan was fucked up.”

Then we have the whole God think again. “Under God” was not originally part of the pledge, probably due to that whole separation of church and state thing. This country was founded on freedom of religion, as long as that religion is some form of Christianity, I suppose. The phrase “under God” as in “one nation under God” wasn’t originally in the pledge. It was added in 1954 in a bill signed by President Dwight Eisenhower. So, me being agnostic, why would I recite a pledge that says this country is “under God.” It’s all just a little bit too cult-like for my tastes.

However, now that I’m thinking about it, there is a way that I might gladly recite the pledge. If you replaced “one nation, under God” with “one nation, under Batman” then I might be down with that. Cause Batman is cool. And he never blew up Alderaan.