What’s It Like Being Dead?

You know, I’m absolutely flippin’ sick. Literally every damn year in this school, I hear people who get a remarkably high exam score proceed to react in various ways, including, but not limited to, celebrating, crying, clinging on to moments before the ass-whooping they’ll receive from their parents, etc. That’s all cringy, but you know what’s the worst of those reactions? Hearing people say, “Omigod, you guys! I have so much work, and my grades are so low! I wanna die!!”

You, a typical kid, are probably wondering, “Well, what is wrong with that statement? It’s just a really cringy, generic quote that’s libel and slander.”

See, the problem with this common phrase is that not only do you sound like 3,000 other people, making you lose your individuality, which can be extremely important in the college process, but you’re also wishing for literal death. I mean, why the heck would you do that? It’s not like your high school makes the school from “Assassination Classroom” look like a pre-K. It’s not like you’ve taken your third caffeine pill today, but still can’t keep your eyes open. It’s not like… alright, you get the point. It’s exactly like all the things listed.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Wtf is wrong with this dude? This man’s killing our entire culture!” I’ll admit, I didn’t properly introduce myself, so allow me to do so now.

I am the ghost of Peter Stuyvesant.

“There is no way some 400-year-old dead dude knows such vernacular language!” typical you asks, which is actually correct. See, I have decided to hold two of your peers captive just so I can get this message across in the best way that the “kool” kids now speak: using poorly-written English with little to no standard writing conventions!

You know, before they named a teenage sweathouse after me, I was having a pretty damn good time in New Amsterdam being governor and all. Then, they had to come in and demolish my hard work, forcing me to live in the Bowery! And even worse, I didn’t go to heaven and see God like I wanted to. I got trapped in purgatory; there is no life or death, only panic and confusion. What you once knew becomes a surprise, for being a ghost makes you act so differently. You young ’uns think you have it tough? I’m trapped between two planes of existence! And now my pegleg is useless whenever people mop the floors because I’m transparent! Despite having amortality, I still have to suffer all the ailments I had when I was alive, including pulling myself along the banisters, groaning and cursing as I do so.

And, on the subject of peglegs, can I talk about the football team? Do you think that naming yourselves the Peglegs would honor me? You literally could’ve named yourselves after ANYTHING else. Y’all could’ve strung two RANDOM words from the English language together, but you chose Peglegs. Do you know how PAINFUL it was with such an excuse of a prosthetic??? Every day I would have to check whether or not some pest was eating it, and that was the LEAST of my issues. The maintenance of it is so PAINFUL that you are lucky your futuristic medicine can give a more realistic representation of a leg. Being a ghost doesn’t help things, no, no, no, it actually WORSENS it. I have NO need for such a DISGRACEFUL artifact anymore, and yet it is STILL bound to me. To find that hundreds of years later, my greatest folly would become the name of a mere sports team is one thing: SHAMEFUL.

And yet, despite living in limbo, I feel like I got the lucky end of the deal with death. There are many other afterlives, including, but not limited to, hell, eternal nothingness, or even being reincarnated as a “Pride and Prejudice” character.

I just want to publish a general plea in this newspaper. Has anyone, anyone at all, seen my pear tree? I brought it over from the Netherlands, and I named it Toekomstige Houten Been Materiaal, which you kids can run through Google Translate. I haven’t seen it since I died. Please let me know if you find it; I’d kill for a pear. Also, dying sucks, try not to do it.