Laszlo Stein thinks about death

Ten year old me and adult Woody Allen had a lot in common. Not only because we were both attracted to 10 year-old girls but also because we were both obsessed with and terrified of death. While most other fifth graders on the playground worried about monsters, I asked them how they could go on living knowing their life was meaningless and would soon end in a vastless abyss. As you can imagine I was a pretty fun kid. 

Looking back this fear feels mostly unprompted. Growing up, all of my grandparents were alive and in fact they still are. The only possible source I could trace this fear to was my life threatening allergy to nuts. As my very Jewish allergist who sounded exactly like Alan Arkin put it to my parents when I was three years old, “You have a very allergic young man.” 

A few years ago my parents enrolled me in The Food Allergy Institute, which promised to eliminate my allergy by exposing me to larger and larger doses of the nuts that I was allergic to as well as shamelessly taking as much money from my parents as possible. The program was massively successful for me. That was until a few weeks ago when after eating my prescribed weekly dose of about 8 walnuts I decided to go for a bike ride. During what ended up being only a 30 minute ride I started to feel the signs of anaphylactic shock. Let me take a break here and say this. If you are looking for a fun carefree thing to do on a Sunday do not consider going into anaphylactic shock. It mostly sucks. After a difficult bike ride back to my house, I eventually stabbed myself with an EpiPen before my mom drove to the Los Angeles Children's Hospital. 

During this drive there came a minute that I could not breathe. This was an issue since oxygen is one of the main ingredients to living. At that moment I felt a true fear of death in a Woody Allen way that I hadn't felt since I was 10. Within seconds that fear was replaced by a different fear: the fear of dying like this. All that I could think from then on out was “god this would be an embarrassing way to die”. Not only would I be dying from the most nerdy condition ever but I would also be wearing biking attire which if you're unfamiliar is like wearing your underwear only uglier, more embarrassing looking, and in my case bright neon. Despite my childhood skepticism, I started thinking about the afterlife and how embarrassing it would be introducing myself to the people there. 

Here's how it would probably go:

Other dead guy: hey you're the new guy right? So… How'd you die? 

Me: umm a self inflected nut allergy while i was dressed exactly like a flamingo

Other dead guy: Cool. I’m the guy who stopped the 9/11 plane headed for D.C.

Eventually we arrived and I walked into the hospital as my mom looked for parking, not looking like my Sunday best and gasping for breath. I of course walked into the wrong part of the hospital. A nurse who seemed to have no idea that this could happen and was shocked by my stupidity eventually redirected me to an elevator. I stood waiting for the elevator to arrive when an obese man in a wheelchair pulled up beside me. Unaware of the size of the elevator I braced for the inevitable awkward conversation: comparing our maladies, negotiating who would enter first, or, in the worst case, devising a solution that involved me sitting on his lap. 

When I finally made my way to the emergency room I was treated almost immediately and discharged five hours later. Let me start by saying this: I’m no doctor. However, many of these patients I strongly felt did not need to be in a hospital. In all fairness, this diagnosis was not based on the many doctor books I have read, but rather medical dramas and a brief experience at a hospital as a kid where I witnessed a security officer very casually compressing a stab wound and while watching something on his phone which to me raised the bar for needing to go to the hospital to either already dead or long already dead. Needless to say, I was unimpressed by the maladies and injuries of my fellow patients. 

During the ride back from the hospital I realized something, I wished that I had a near death realization. I expected to have some clarity or even regrets. You know like “God I should have told my crush I like her” or told off that one ass-hole in my grade or wiped my computer's memory before leaving on that bike ride.” But I didn't have a near death realization, and in all fairness that could have been because I didn't get close enough to death, or it could be because they don't exist. 

Days later I sat down to think about the experience and after taking toll of the situation I did have some realizations. These are those realizations:

• I'm never going to get another piece run in the barefoot times so why not just open up on a pedophile joke.

• I need to die in a cool or heroic way (preferably saving someone in a skydiving accident) 

• Die in something stylish (preferably a seersucker suit with an ascot, casual but not stuffy)