Yeah, But Did You Die? Tales of Metaphorical (and Actual) Deaths
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner
Funny how a simple meme can resurrect the most embarrassing moments of your life. There I was, scrolling through Facebook, when someone responded to my comment with that classic meme: “Yeah, but did you die?”
Well, actually…
The thing is, I have died—twice, if we’re counting. Once metaphorically (okay, maybe more than once) and once literally. But isn’t it strange how these moments of “death”—whether by embarrassment or by actual flatline—become the stories we never forget?
“Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.” – Oscar Wilde
And boy, does my diary have some entries worth sharing.
Death by Embarrassment: Take One
Once, when I took this girl out in high school, I bought the most enormous container of popcorn and two sodas at the movie theater.
Unfortunately, while walking up the stairs to give the Movie Ticket Collector Dude Guy our tickets, I caught my foot on the bottom step, tripping slowly up the entire flight of stairs.
One of the lids on a soda container wasn’t secure, so with each step, a bigger tidal wave of soda splashed into my face, up my nostrils, and over the top of my head.
By the time we reached the top of the stairs, no soda remained in the containers, and none had made it to the carpeted steps because it was all over me.
And the Movie Ticket Collector Dude Guy watched how I heroically saved those damn soda container cups, and he blurted out, “NICE.”
I don’t remember what movie played that night, and I never saw that girl again, but I saved those two soda containers, dammit.
“Embarrassment is the greatest teacher, but since its lessons are exactly those we have tried hardest to conceal from ourselves, it may teach us, also, to perfect our self-deception.” – James Richardson
Death by Embarrassment: The Sequel
All gymnastic meets are typically quiet with no outbursts from what is typically tiny, under-sized audiences.
However, the place was packed during a City Championship Gymnastics meet, and I was doing a still-rings routine.
As I went from an iron cross pose into a handstand position, my body expelled the maximum amount of air possible from the wrong end in the loudest sorts of ways.
Typically, a loud crowd in a gymnasium deadens all ambient sounds. However, as in most gymnastics meets, the crowd was dead silent on this day, while I was the complete opposite of quiet but deadly.
I was so fixated on getting my routine right that as I went into a handstand position, I heard something I had never heard before at a gymnastic meet—waves of uncontrollable, hysterical laughter, its reverberating din shaking the ceiling.
My attention and focus shifted to another sight I had never seen at a gymnastic meet before either—all the judges slumped back, their heads tilted back further still, with their mouths agape and tears streaming down their red blazoned cheeks.
I finished my routine, scored well—9.4—and returned to my teammates, still on the floor laughing uncontrollably.
My teammate Gene had to borrow another teammate’s tights because, as I had my explosive misfortune, Gene was in the air in the middle of a horizontal split and heard what everyone else heard, causing him to overstretch and tear his gymnastic tights.
“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” – Gabriel García Márquez
When Memory Meets Reality
Sometimes our memories come with unexpected twists. Like when I successfully completed the Walt Disney World Marathon, only to discover their website shows I finished as a 44-year-old woman. (Spoiler alert: I’m not.)
And then there was my tonsil removal surgery, where the anesthesiologist casually mentioned he couldn’t wake me up for almost two minutes.
“Wait, did I die!?!” I blurted.
“Yes, but only for two minutes.” He grinned. “Plus, I brought you back. So, you owe me.”
“The true art of memory is the art of attention.” – Samuel Johnson
The Writer’s Memory Bank
For writers, these moments—embarrassing, triumphant, or just plain bizarre—are pure storytelling gold. They remind us that the most memorable stories often spring from:
- Sensory overloads: Like the feeling of sticky soda in places soda should never be
- Public performances gone hilariously wrong
- Unexpected plot twists that life throws our way
- Moments when reality proves stranger than fiction
“We are what we remember. If we lose our memory, we lose our identity and our identity is the accumulation of our experiences.” – Erik Pevernagie
The Art of Memory Mining
As writers, our job isn’t just to remember these moments but to capture their essence in ways that make readers feel like they were there—watching that soda cascade, hearing that ill-timed sound effect, or discovering they’ve somehow changed gender in official marathon records.
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” – Lois Lowry
Because in the end, it’s not just about what happened—it’s about how these moments changed us, shaped us, and gave us stories worth telling.
“Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” – Kevin Arnold
So yes, I did die—both metaphorically from embarrassment and literally for two minutes during surgery. But these “deaths” gave birth to stories that live on, proving that sometimes the most mortifying moments make the most memorable tales.
What seemingly insignificant moment has triggered one of your most vivid memories? Share your story in the comments below.
J.W. Zarek is a Wall Street Journal bestselling co-author of “Writer’s Success Secrets” and “The Happiness Code.” His latest works include the Golden Book Award Finalist “Bella Brown’s Messier Than Messy Room” and the 41-award winning novel “The Devil Pulls the Strings.”
