by Annette LaSelle

I wracked my brain and am sufficiently confident that although I have cheated at many things, death isn’t one of them. Damn shame too since the only cheating stories that can be shared with gusto are those about foiling the grim reaper. Tales about cheating death are uncommon, worthy, chaste and pure while tales about cheating on one’s taxes are common, unworthy, dastardly and dirty; the difference really between The New Yorker and The National Enquirer.

Nothing is as thrilling as hearing how John Q. Public fell off the top of the Empire State Building and landed on his head only to walk away totally unscathed. Through some kind of magic, miracle or hocus pocus he escaped the scythe by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin. He cheated death.

What sets those who escape death apart?

As often as we hear stories like John Q.’s we hear about the unsuspecting fisherman who while trolling for trout in a spring fed lake is, most unfortunately, attacked and eaten by a school of piranhas that mysteriously (and never to be solved) found their way from the Amazon to that particular lake at that particular time bringing about the bizarre demise of another nice guy.

Why didn’t he escape? Why wasn’t he able to cheat death?

Well, I have a thought. I think that pureness of heart is involved in a lot fewer miraculous escapes than we think and a blood alcohol content of eight times the legal limit is more likely the winning factor.

Take the case of John Q.

First of all, nobody sober, pure of heart or not, falls off the Empire State Building. Sober people are very trepidatious about where they put their feet at that height. Drunken people do not have trepidations. Furthermore, once John Q. stepped off the building he invoked one of the life saving (death cheating) principles that protect drunks. He was what is commonly called a rag doll. John Q. tumbled to the earth like a cotton ball caught in a light breeze and landed on his head that was already so messed up that one more blow to it wasn’t going to alter John Q’s life at all. That is how John Q. cheated death.

The fisherman belongs to a temperance society; but you already suspected that, didn’t you?

What I have learned from pondering about the cheating death phenomenon is that it might not be advantageous to crow about your experience as you are probably revealing more than you realize. I, for one, am going to assume you are just another lucky lush.