My last request

I’m usually not one for details, but when it comes to my funeral there is one condition that I am demanding be adhered to. At my funeral, no one wearing dress clothes will be allowed to attend. Everyone is to show up wearing casual clothing…shorts, t-shirts, jeans, stuff like that. If you show up in a suit, you’ll be “kicked to the curb.”

Yes, I am serious. This is what I want.

Funerals are difficult times…making someone dress up in a suit is not going to make things any easier to deal with. What does dressing up accomplish? Are you doing it for me? I’m dead! Now I’ve never been dead before (although I’ve wished it many a time during meetings at the office), but I think I can safely assume that I won’t be offended if you don’t dress up. I won’t be sitting there up in heaven with a notepad keeping track of who’s outfit didn’t coordinate at my wake. Your clothing didn't matter to me when I was alive, and death is not going to change me.

Let’s examine a suit for a minute since it's the male uniform of choice at dress up events. First you have the shirt – now the rule for the shirt is that it must be stiff and scratchy. If you accidentally buy one that isn’t stiff and scratchy, you have to apply generous amounts of starch to it so that it becomes stiff and scratchy. The shirt usually has about 758 buttons and you have to use them all, including the one for the neck of the shirt which was carefully measured and fitted for the neck of a 3 year old child. You know the shirt is ready to be put on when all the wrinkles are gone and the shirt will not bend or move without hydraulic equipment. The irony is, later on you’re going to cover the shirt up with a jacket and a tie so that no one can even see it.

Then we have the tie…I’d like to seriously sucker-punch the loser who came up with this idea. I can picture it now – some greedy tailor is sitting there at the gallows watching a man hang and thinks to himself, “You know…if that were silk it wouldn’t look half bad!” A tie is just a noose with better fabric and a decorative knot. Putting amoebas or Tabasco bottles on it doesn’t change this one bit.

And we can’t forget the shoes! Dress shoes! They have a sole in them that is about as thick as a sheet of paper, which means that your feet will hurt after exactly 3.4 seconds of standing up in them. They’re tapered at the toe end, which is strange because the human foot is not. The shoe is basically a leather funnel…which means that at the back end, you have enough room for two feet, but at the front you don’t have enough space for even half your toes. You have to stack your toes one on top of the other and it looks like the shoes are pregnant when you wear them. The leather is usually that really hard kind that will not give an inch but will scratch at even the slightest abrasion so that you can spend 3 hours applying shoe polish to wear them for 2 hours. At least now we know why they make dress socks so thin!

There are so many things wrong with the jacket and pants that I don’t even know where to start…but needless to say, good job picking fabrics that are breathable and soft.

See, I think this tradition of dressing up was started by some guy who hated everyone he knew. He wanted to get one last shot at them on his way out, so he requested that everyone dress up for his funeral. Then he made sure to die during the summer and asked to have the service outdoors. I bet if you dug that guy up, he’d still have a smile on his face.

Unlike that tool, I am very fond of my family and friends (most of them anyways) and do not want my passing to be a time of suffering. I will be at home with my Lord and Savior in a place greater than our imagination is capable of reaching. You guys will be stuck here on this miserable planet with your lying loser politicians and your inadequate public schools and your ignorant masses. Why should I add to your misery by asking you to dress up? I won’t do it – I just don’t have the heart.

The bouncers at my funeral will be armed with an overly starched pair of dress socks that I wore for several hours during the outdoor wedding I attended last July, and will flail you with them should you try to enter wearing dress clothes.