The third stage was Bargaining, and I did my share of that. “Please, God. All I want to do is hit the ball. What is it You want? Good deeds? Give me a swing and I’ll give You good deeds up the wazoo. I’ll help sick kids, the homeless … well, sick kids. I’ll stop all the mocking. I’ll give up cookies, coffee, coffee cake, cashmere. I’ll go to temple. Is that what You want? Temple? Done! Can I bring my BlackBerry? O.K., no BlackBerry, I promise! Just let me hit the ball! What do You care?” He didn’t. What kind of God won’t let me hit the ball? What did I ever do to Him?
In this week’s New Yorker, Larry David contributed a piece to Shouts and Murmurs about how he’s gone through the traditional Kübler-Ross stages of loss, but instead of it being about a terminal illness, it’s about how crappy a golfer he is. It’s sort of like an unproduced monologue from Curb Your Enthusiasm:
