REALLY? YOU’RE TOO GOOD FOR OUR NEWSLETTER?

 McSWEENEY’S

Would you like to sign up for our newsletter?

Yes!

No thanks. I’m a big dumb dumb. I win the award for Biggest Dumb Dumb every single year. I have so many Biggest Dumb Dumb awards that the shelf I kept them on collapsed under the weight. People got hurt.

When I go out to eat at a restaurant, I spill my drink. I do it on purpose. I also text and drive. I’m texting and driving right now. I’m texting things like “Newsletters are stupid” to all my friends. They all reply, “Who is this?” because I don’t have any friends.

I am a human toilet. When I go into Home Depot, the employees say, “Excuse me, the toilet aisle is over there,” and “I don’t think we’ll ever sell this toilet because it is the worst toilet in the world,” and “Hey, why is this toilet just walking around? Somebody do something.”

Get your precious newsletter away from me. I hate knowing things. In fact, I wish I could un-know things. If there were a surgical procedure to empty all the knowledge out of my tiny little brain, I’d sign up tomorrow. I’d drain my entire life savings to have a doctor cut into my skull and scoop out every piece of information I’ve ever learned—I’m talking algebra, my dog’s name, where I live—all of it. I want my brain to be a hollow vessel, like a Halloween jack-o-lantern after someone has scraped out all the guts. I want this tiny thinking-organ wiped like a newborn baby’s bottom. I want a professional flutist to be able to play my head holes like a whistle.

I think I’m some kind of big shot. I’m basically a hero for not signing up. All the people will stand and cheer for my empty inbox. They’ll elect me mayor of Loser Town, a godforsaken place that has no newsletters. The post office will create a limited edition commemorative stamp to honor me. It will be a picture of a toilet.

I walk around all day in my big britches without thinking about newsletters once. Because I’m a coward. I lack the vulnerability necessary to open my heart to newsletters. I closed myself off, choosing to move through this world inside my cold, hardened shell. At this point, I’m barely human. I am the walking darkness.

Think of the dumbest animal you can. A sea cucumber, perhaps. No, the protozoan on the back of a sea cucumber. Okay, now think of that protozoan shuffling around in obscurity, unable to perceive itself or its surroundings. I am that protozoan’s even stupider baby. Newsletter? I can’t even hear the word. I have no ears, no brain, and, saddest of all, no newsletter.

I don’t deserve this newsletter. I wish I could have a newsletter this nice, but it’s too late. I only clicked the “no” box because I wanted to commit an act of random cruelty. But it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t feel anything. I want to feel love again, but I never will. Not getting this newsletter is my cross to bear. And long after everyone I care about has died, their bodily remains long gone, my soul will walk the earth for eternity, yearning to read even a single sentence of this newsletter. But it shall never be.