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Where’s Pa? A Reincarnation Snafu Explained

George Grossman died of natural causes at the age of 33 – if you consider being struck by a meteor “natural.” George’s bewildering demise occurred while he was walking into the hospital to witness the delivery of his second child who would turn out to be a son named Joe. Fatherless Joe (his mother Shirley never remarried) grew up longing for the father he never knew. Joe vowed that when he died, he would seek out his deceased father in the afterworlds.

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And one day, many years later, it came to pass that Joe did pass. Upon ascending to the vault of heaven (evidently he’d been a Good Joe) was pleased to find himself in the company of his long since deceased sister Kelly, his mother Shirley and a few family pets all gathered in a gorgeous iridescent meadow. But where was dad? He’d waited his entire life for this moment and dad was a no show.

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“What gives,” Joe exclaimed? “Where’s dad,” he lamented in the shimmering ethereal waviness of the afterlife?

Just then a Yoda-ish guardian angel appeared and explained to Joe that when his father George died (meteor to the head), George’s soul was placed in the body of his newborn son, Joe Grossman.

“You mean,” Joe gasped, “I’m a motherf…”.

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“No, no, no,” interrupted his guardian angel. “I wouldn’t use that term exactly. I mean yes, you did, but she was your loving wife at the time. Oedipal complexes aside, I’m here to tell you that you are your own father. That’s why he didn’t show up in the afterlife despite your lifelong yearnings. Now Joe, this rarely happens in the reincarnation business I superintend, but consider this snafu from my perspective. You had just been born and you had also just died, and there was no time to implement the usual Bardo protocols. To keep the supply chain moving, we took a short cut with the code of interdimensional reincarnation birthing procedures and placed your soul directly from your meteor-flattened body into your son’s newly born body. I hope you’re not too upset. We didn’t want to leave you in Limbo.

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“As a reward for enduring our production snafu, in your next lifetime we’re allowing you to get in line twice when they pass out brains – or any other organ you may want to double in size. You’re also scheduled to inherit the handsome gene from your mother’s side,” declared the angel. And with that crude gesture of frontier reincarnation justice, the little oracle evanesced into the ethers and returned to God’s After Party.

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Moral of the story: No matter how dirty you might be, never take a meteor shower.

 

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