How to Feel Like a Big Man

To feel big and important, all you have to do is consider. As I said above (below), in ten years, all the First World War veterans will be dead. If you're as young as I am, you're pretty certain to outlive every last one. All the Germans of the world couldn't do what you're about to. For extra macho, pantomime holding a machine gun in a few years as you read reports that the last veteran is dead (Will that make the newspapers? I hope so.) Ehhehhehhhhehheh!

I guess some people would consider it melancholy that even great soldiers like those all die eventually, but not me. The more great, heroic, legendary people die, the better I look in comparison. Augustus? Charlemagne? Napoleon? In at least one sense, I am greater than all of them put together, and pretty soon I'll outrank the entire American Expeditionary Force. Not a great triumph; as we established above (below), they're not well remembered. But when you consider that all you have to do is keep pulling air into your lungs and you're automatically better than General Pershing, it makes you feel pretty special.

It gets better of course. If you're reasonably young, you stand a very good chance of outliving every WWII veteran, too. Audie Murphy has nothing on you. And if you're lucky, you might outlive all the Vietnam veterans. Beyond that, it gets sketchy; are Gulf War survivors even worth outliving? Maybe it's just sour grapes, but it feels like these past 30 years have just been full of anti-heroes and bores. Who cares when George Bush Sr. dies? Honestly, if I died now, I would have outlived 99% of all the great men who ever lived. If I die at seventy-five, I bet that number goes up to a hundred. We're living at the end of history, folks.