En Memoriam

I saw a whole NY street filled with cheerleaders at the parade so I dug out two previous works and spliced them together.

Every year more than 200,000 teenagers are killed in cheerleading accidents in America--more than any civilized country on earth. Australia has over 250,000 cheerleading deaths annually but most of those are alcohol-related so they pretty much have it coming to them. This horrible slaughter of our nation’s best and brightest (and mostly sober) goes largely unreported in the mainstream media.

OK, I made up that part about there being 200,000 cheerleading fatalities but even a single death is unacceptable. Well, that’s not entirely true either. If no one dies in a cheerleading accident then you have to wonder if the kids are really trying out there, you know, pushing the edge of the envelope and all. I think that somewhere between 1 and 200,000 deaths is an acceptable amount of casualties to raise team spirit. Less than one death showing a lack of commitment and over 200,000 deaths could cause serious public health problems like a cholera epidemic. Try having team spirit in the middle of a cholera epidemic. It ain’t happening.

I can live with 200,000 dead cheerleaders a year. It’s a risk I’m willing to take for so much pep because pep is short for peppy and peppy is something you can’t put a price tag on or wrap up in a body bag. Peppy is what separates us from the animals. Not all animals because I saw a nature show on TV about otters and they were sliding down a snow bank into the water and that looked pretty peppy to me. I mean animals like cows that are never peppy and just stand around all day and eat grass and crap and that’s why we eat them. You don’t see people eating peppy little otters or cheerleaders. That would be gross. That would make me sad, but eating a big rare steak makes me happy.

I was watching ESPN and some college basketball game was on. The cheerleaders looked so incredibly upbeat. Upbeat, sure, but what if one of them died? What then? Can you even imagine a world without cheerleaders? Wake up, America! Wake up before it’s too late! Perhaps it already is too late. What have we done?

Only moments ago you were shouting words of encouragement to the team. Things like "go team" and "steal that ball" and "For fuck’s sake, can you at least pretend to play a little defense?" Now your mangled corpse lies sprawled on the gym floor, your little hand still clutching a pom-pom. But wait. You're moving. Thank goodness, you're alive. No, it's just that gross nervous twitching thing that dead things do. Can we get this body out of here? We still got another quarter to play.

The game must go on. Nobody knows that better than the lifeless heap with saddle shoes the janitor is dragging feet-first out the fire exit. What a trooper, a real team player, right up until the fatality. There will be a burial, stop being so impatient. This is the week of the state finals so right after that we'll take proper care of the body. A week or two won't make any difference, what with as cold as it's been lately.

On a recent visit to our nation’s capital I visited the National Cheerleading Memorial on the Mall. It was a bitter cold winter day. I walked past the memorial teary-eyed, and read the names of the fallen: Britney, Brittany, Britni (How many ways can you spell that, for Pete’s sake?), Tammy, Bobbi, and a lot of other names that all end in a vowel. I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and wished that some guy like Tom Brokaw would write a smarmy book to recognize their obvious contribution to our modern society. The silence is practically deafening.