I heard about someone building his own casket.
I thought that sounded like a good idea.
It seems likely to me that I’ll be dead soon.
So better get to work on that casket, I figure.

I’m always reminding my family that I’ll probably be dead soon.
They like it when I say that.

When I turned 16 I became convinced that I would die before I was 18.
Part of the reason I did that was so I would drive carefully.
And it worked.
I survived.
It still works.
For years I’ve been driving like an old man delivering elaborate cakes on a reality TV show.

So I bought some wood for my casket.
Nothing fancy.
Just plywood.
And I used an ax cut the wood just so.
The pieces got that ‘rough hewn’ look that gives pallbearers splinters.
The rough hewn look is De rigueur.
Or in this case de rigeuer mortis.

Apparently, I told one of my younger brothers, when he was 10 or so, that I didn’t think he’d make it to 18.
I think my idea was to put something like that in his head the way I’d put not making it to 18 in my own head.
And that would be a protection against doing stupid stuff that would make him become a dead corpse.
So that was very nice of me to do.

Now I just had to hammer the whole dang casket together.
I got out my trusty hammer.
I tapped a nail into place.
Then I drove it in.
Then I did the same thing with about five more nails.

And that’s all it took.
I threw a couple of throw pillows from the couch into the casket to give it a homey look.
Boy, did it look nice.

I could hardly wait to die.