Sex And Ghosts

I Think it is absolutely amazing how much smarter. My mother, who
always extolled the virtues of a good education, has become in the past twenty-seven years. At sixteen I was convinced that I was the smartest, most intelligent and independent person in the whole world, not to mention the small community of Glenns Ferry, Idaho, and that my mother was, very likely, a complete dummy. After all, how, or better yet, what, could school teach me? ----- I knew everything!
    Being the all wise, all knowing individual I was, I decided I no longer needed to waste my time and talents with such a boring, trivial, inconsequential thing as high school. The time had come for me to move on to bigger and more important things: Money! Girls! Independence!  I quit high school and took a job as sexton's assistant for the city of Glenns Ferry.
    Of course being the supremely intelligent individual I was, the only two things about the job that really registered in my mind were that it had some relation to sex (sexton's assistant) and the pay was $7.50 per hour. At sixteen I was just as interested in sex and money as I am today, and $7.50 per hour twenty-seven years ago was worth a damn site more than it is today. Imagine me getting paid for something associated with sex.
    Imagine the total consternation I felt when I discovered that my job was in fact, not related to sex but to cemeteries and the upkeep of graves and to the care and general cleaning of the city morgue.
    I decided that even though my new job was not going to be as exciting a I had pictured it, I could still make my life rather exciting with the aid of the monetary recompense being offered in exchange for such mundane and menial chores as: cutting grass, polishing headstones and sweeping floors in the city morgue. Of course there were other more exotic duties to be performed as well. Duties such as digging graves, planting flowers, and pruning trees and shrubs. As the majority of these activities were performed and some were quite physical I kept myself at that time in reasonable shape as well as earning a pretty good salary which was quickly spent on rent, food, clothes, and laundry. What was left I used for transportation and recreation.
    Because my responsibilities included cleaning the morgue as well as those duties in the cemetery I would quite often do my morgue  - related chores in the late evenings after I had supper and after the place was deserted for the night. It was seldom the morgue was used for the actual purpose it was intended and even more rarely was it used to house unembalmed cadavers. However, there were some exceptions to the general routine of daily life in our small town. One such incident occurred one summer night after an automobile accident outside town.
    On this particular evening I arrived at the morgue around 11:00 pm, which was later than usual, to do my nightly chores. Upon my arrival I noted that there were two sheet-draped cadavers resting on wheeled carts in the center of the room. This was normal in cases of a funeral being held the next day as the mortician usually dressed his subjects just prior to the funeral. I never even thought about whether or not they had been embalmed. Even the fact that both were very recently deceased made no impression on me at the time.
    I went about my normal routine of sweeping, dusting, emptying trash cans and other related chores, which required such finely tuned skills such as a talented ambitious young high school dropout as myself and few others might possess, when I thought I heard something. I stopped and listened but no sound was repeated so I went and got my mop. I always left the mopping for last because I hated it most. My mind was not really on my work at this point but was instead on Hanson's Cafe and the fun I would have giving the waitress a hard time when I stopped there after I finished for the night.
    As I approached the two sheet-covered carts with my mop I thought I heard a noise. It sounded like a breathy sigh. "What was that" I thought? At that moment one of the cadavers slowly sat up with a groan, I thought might wake the one beside him ---------- .
    My next conscious thought was that this was not a place I wished to be and the time was ripe for me to vacate the premises as expeditiously as possible. I ran though the screen door, which opened to the inside of the room, without stopping to open it so when I say "through" I mean in the literal sense of the word. I was three blocks away before I even thought of slowing down.
    I arrived at Hanson's Cafe about the same time as I usually did. I sat in my usual seat. The waitress made a comment about my being pale, and shaking like a dog passing a peach seed. "Are you feeling OK" she asked? "Feel and see" I replied, making a small attempt at humor and then proceeded to tell her about my night.
    The waitress stared at me for a moment and then began to laugh hysterically. "What is so damn funny" I asked? She just laughed all the harder. Finally, she calmed herself enough to explain her laugher. "You are always talking about how smart you are. If you had taken high school biology you could have saved yourself the fright and embarrassment you suffered tonight." She started laughing again and just walked away leaving me feeling quite ridiculous and very conspicuous.
    Well, here I am 27 years later looking back at myself, wondering how in hell I managed to get this far along in life without someone putting me out of my misery because they felt sorry for the conceited ass I was at the time. I now know that the corpse sat up because of rigor mortise which caused the abdominal muscles to tighten. Air trapped in the lungs was displaced and forced past the vocal chords causing the moan I expected to wake his comrade.
    It woke me instead and I went back to school!!!