Thank You

I was watching television yesterday and it hit me. I cannot thank Bob Ross. For those of you who don't watch public television during the day, Bob Ross is the extremely blissed-out painter of landscapes and teacher of millions via the medium of public television. He's also dead.

I'm sure that everyone probably has someone whom they can never thank, or if not that there are messages to dead people we'd all like to send but cannot. It's not always, "Thank you." I'm sure there are unfinished businesses of less pleasant import, perhaps even messages which are probably better off not sent. But it doesn't matter. You won't be able to send them.

Some people leave flowers on graves. Some people write letters and waste the Post Office's time sending them to dead (or non-existent) people. Some people don't send them, or post them online, or whatever. It's a natural thing to want to send the message somehow. But I don't really think that dead people are reading mail. They've probably got better things to do. We want to send messages for us, not for them.

So I can't thank Bob Ross. Hell, there are some people I never even heard of until after they were already dead that I'd like to thank. Some of them would, I'm sure, be perfectly happy to receive a thank you from me if they were alive, and others probably would not. Without dying, I can't be sure whether or not dead people would like to receive mail. But it's a healthy exercise to figure out whom you'd like to thank.

And then save them up for next year. You never know whether or not the Academy might be calling.