TonyDeyalTHE ANSWER to the riddle, "Why did Hitler commit suicide?" is "He got the gas bill." Because I live in Trinidad, one of many victims of state-controlled, monopolistic utility companies, while not empathising with him, I completely understand his predicament. What I find difficult to understand is the act of suicide itself.
Even though I might not be experiencing the best of times, they are not the worst, certainly not so bad that I would resort to an act that has been described as our way of telling God, "You can't fire me. I quit." I figure that with my luck if I called the suicide-prevention Hot Line they would put me on hold. I heard about a Suicide Club but when I tried to join found out that they had only held one meeting. I figure I might be like the cannibal who committed suicide and found himself in a stew. I can imagine myself going to talk to a psychiatrist about my suicidal tendencies.
"Doctor," I would confide, "I suddenly get the urge to kill myself. I never know when these feelings are going to occur." The psychiatrist would look at me thoughtfully and say, "In that case you better pay me in advance." One man who was not sure if he really wanted to commit suicide, instead of asking for the assistance of Doctor Death, the euthanasia expert Dr. Jack Kevorkian, threw himself in front of a parked car. Another put a rope around his neck, stood on a chair, and threw the rope over an overhead beam. He was ready. Then Dr. Kevorkian walked in and asked, "Why don't you put the rope around your neck tighter." The man answered querulously, "I tried that but I can't breathe."
Then there was the famous television frog that Kermitted suicide. And the man who, bemoaning his inability to care for his four children, was about to put a rope around his neck when his wife stopped him by saying, "Wait. You're hanging an innocent man."
Actually, in the matter of suicide, truth is much stranger than fiction. Last week in Romania, 45-year-old Victor Dodoi complained to consumer authorities about the poor quality of rope he used in a failed attempt to hang himself. His family found him hanging from a tree, cut the rope, and took him to a hospital where he survived. "You can't even die in this country," he said bitterly.
Some people do. In Italy a man decided to end it all by setting fire to himself and burning to death. When the flames caught he had second thoughts and tried frantically to beat out the flames. Unfortunately, he was in so much pain that he plunged over a cliff, smashing himself to pieces hundreds of feet below.
An Englishman named Stratton was so depressed after his wife had left him that he decided on suicide by gas. He sealed the kitchen windows and doors, turned on the gas oven, and waited, and waited. He had forgotten that his newly acquired North Sea gas was non-toxic. Thinking things over, he decided he might as well live. He lit a cigar to celebrate his second chance. North Sea gas, while not poisonous, is still highly inflammable. Stratton and his house were blown to pieces.
In Australia, a man who decided to kill his dog, took the animal to the local rubbish dump. However, on finding that he couldn't face the task, the 55-year-old man placed his .22 calibre revolver into his mouth and killed himself.
Some suicides result from what would seem to us to be very trivial matters, nothing as weighty as the huge cell-phone bills or water-rates that all must pay even if they don't have a continuous supply of water. A 15-year-old Japanese student rang his mother and, when it was time to end the conversation, became embroiled in an argument with her about who should hang up the phone first. When he failed to convince his mother that those who received the calls and not those who made them should put down the receiver first, he killed himself.
In 1976, a young Japanese girl married to an American, was so anxious to please her husband that she decided to cook his favourite dish - bacon. She had never seen bacon before and because every attempt she made to cook it failed, she committed suicide.
Perhaps the most incredible of all were Albert and Germaine Liebaut who were found dead at their home in Paris only six days after they were married. In a note left for the police they said, "We are killing ourselves because we are too happy - We adore each other but would rather descend into the grave together while we are still happy."
What actually prompted this column was a story about a famous French Chef, Bernard Loiseau, who committed suicide a few weeks ago when the Gault-Millau guide, a rival to the Michelin guide for rating restaurants, cut his score from 19 out of 20 to 17. Loiseau was a perfectionist who said he wanted to be to food what Pele was to soccer. According to Paul Bocuse, a chef known as the high priest of France's "nouvelle cuisine", "When you are the leader of the pack and all of a sudden they cut you down, it's hard to understand. It hit him hard."
Using Loiseau's logic, there should have been a lot of suicides following the first round of the World Cup of cricket, and our local General Elections. Fortunately, cricketers and politicians are not like Loiseau or Charondas, the Greek legislator who lived in the 6th Century B.C. One of his laws forbade citizens to carry weapons into the public assembly. Forgetting this, Charondas wore his sword to a meeting and was reproached by a fellow citizen for violating his own law. Charondas took out his sword and after saying, "By Zeus, I will confirm it", killed himself.
Astronomer Girolamo Cardano was a famous astrologer who constructed a horoscope predicting the hour of his own death. When the day dawned and found him in good health and safe from harm, rather than have his prediction prove false, he committed suicide.
My view is best put by Dorothy Parker, the American humourist. She wrote, "Razors pain you;/ Rivers are damp;/ Acids stain you;/ And drugs cause cramp./ Guns aren't lawful;/ Nooses give;/ Gas smells awful;/ You might as well live."
Tony Deyal was last seen agreeing with an Irish politician who declaimed, "The only way to stop this suicide wave is to make it a capital offence, punishable by death."
