The Ocean Tried to Kill Me Twice
The first time the ocean tried to kill me, it went back in time and targeted my great-grandfather William Williams.
When he was a boy, William and his mother were in England. They made their way down to the Southampton docks. Yes, they were there to board the ship responsible for allowing me to see the realistic upper nakedness of a woman for the first time:
Titanic.
1997 was the year. James Cameron was my teacher. He gave me a wise saying and taught me what it means.
“Everything happens for a reason.”
The Titanic sunk. The reason? Iceberg. Another reason: the realistic nakedness I mentioned. That tasteful nudity, like an ant climbing across a bridge of ants, climbed its way over 1,500 frozen bodies and 85 years to reach my young and respectful eyes.
The Face That Coughed And Launched A Thousand Lives
On the way to the unsinkable ship of dreams, William William’s mother had one rule: “Do not cough.”
Titanic was on the lookout for a certain kind of cough: pertussis (whooping cough), which is a cough that makes a whooping sound come out of you. It was a real killer in those days, and if you had it, you did not get to die on the Titanic.
William had a cough that day, which sounded a lot like a whoop.
Forgive me, but I’d have to hear it or have it to be convinced that a person who whoops isn’t the king or queen of comedy.
I’m like my mother. I laugh when certain bad things happen. She laughs when people fall down. She can’t help it. The more important the person, the harder she laughs. If God tripped on his robes, mom would laugh her way to hell. I laugh at the thought of someone screaming the sound “whoop!” in public while fighting for their lives. Yes, this is because my mother and I are the Devil.
But William didn’t have the cough that whooped. His was just a normal cough, one that parroted the whoop. Still, Titanic’s agents were afraid of any kind of cough. William, though he tried his hardest to obey his mother — “Just don’t breathe” — breathed again and coughed while they were halfway up the ramp. Instantly, an anti-disease officer shouted, “Stop!”
