The Martyr

 

            There was once a man who dreamed of martyrdom. His only wish, in life, was to love something, anything, enough to trade his life for it. One day he saw an SUV bearing down on a kitten at top speed. He saw this as his chance, finally come. To give his life to save the life of an innocent child from the very caricature of yuppie greed, now that was a beautiful thing. So he dashed in front of the speeding monster and threw himself on top of the kitten. They both were hit. The kitten died a smear on his chest. He lived. The only result was a massive hospital bill. So he tried again, suing the hospital that saved his life for servicing him against his will, and said that they had charged him more than was necessary. He was sure that some vindictive doctor would surely pull his plug for such ingratitude. It didn’t happen. In fact he won the case and became quite wealthy. The doctors were all very kind. Upon coming to terms with his repeated failure he decided that he could at least martyr himself for the cause of martyrdom. After all that was the thing he loved the most. So, he went onto his back porch one day and put a .357 magnum in his mouth. He pulled the trigger and decorated his favorite apple tree with his own gray matter. He woke up once again in the hospital. They told him that before he had a brain tumor which had gone unnoticed, but when he shot himself he had blown that section of his brain out and now he would be fine. It would have been inoperable otherwise. Hearing this, he was disgusted by the whole thing. He made a pact with himself that  he would never die for anything again. He learned to love money and after squandering his remaining fortune (the hospital bills for putting his skull back together were quite mind shattering themselves) he took a job at a large conglomerate as head of the lobbying department for their weapons manufacturers. In the following years millions of people died for his causes, but he did not. He died of old age at the age of 95. God bless America.