My neighbor Cassius died over the weekend and I went to his funeral to pay my respects. I wore a black suit and my Spider-Man mask. People kept giving me weird looks when they saw the Spider-Man mask, but I couldn’t take it off because otherwise everyone would see my Hitler mustache. Still, people were curious, so here are some lies I told so I could keep wearing the mask.
1. “I look too much like my dead neighbor and taking my mask off would confuse people.”
In reality, Cassius and I don’t really look too much alike. We both have adorable dimples when we smile and we both have Hitler mustaches, but other than that we are different-looking people. Still, when I told people at his funeral that if I took off my Spider-Man mask people would think I was Cassius back from the dead due to how similar we looked, people kind of nodded and mumbled things like, “That makes sense,” or, “Why didn’t I think of that?” It took the heat off me and my Spider-Man mask for a good 15 minutes or so.
2. “I’m wearing this mask to scare moths away from the casket.”
A group of Cassius’s war buddies from Operation Desert Storm took me aside and said, “You better have a really good reason for wearing that stupid mask on a day like this.” I had just watched a documentary about bugs and remembered that one type of bugs is moths. Thinking fast, I said, “Yes. I have an amazing reason for wearing this mask. It scares moths away from the casket. Moths are afraid of Spider-Man because spiders eat moths and men hit moths with newspapers, so combining spiders and men together creates the ultimate moth-scaring machine. If I wasn’t wearing this mask, Cassius would be swarmed with moths right now and they’d be eating his hair and his military uniform, so you’d end up burying a naked guy and naked guys can’t get into Heaven.” Cassius’s war buddies were like, “We don’t see any moths around the casket,” and I said, “Yeah, exactly. You’re welcome.” After that they shrugged and left me alone.
3. “I’m Jewish and wearing a Spider-Man mask is a part of Passover.”
I’m not really Jewish. My mother was Catholic and my father was the high priest of the cult of Minerva. But Cassius’s mother had taken me aside and said, “Why are you wearing that ridiculous mask on this solemn occasion?” and I had to think fast, so I said that I was “unfathomably Jewish” and that wearing a Spider-Man mask is “the most important thing in all of Passover.” I said it represented the part of the Passover story where Moses splits the Red Sea in half and everyone says, “Moses you are a freak and a magician,” and Moses says, “I might be a freak, but the only real magician is Spider-Man.” Cassius’s mother said, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, that was so inconsiderate of me. Happy Passover,” and then she left me alone. I felt bad about lying about being Jewish, especially when I knew that I had a Hitler mustache under my mask, considering all the arguments that Jewish people and Hitler had with each other over the years. But I was happy I got to keep the mask on.
4. “I’m smiling underneath my mask and it would be inappropriate to show people my smile during a funeral.”
Right before the coffin was lowered into the ground, one of the violinists from the strings quartet Cassius had founded cornered me and demanded that I take off my Spider-Man mask to “show some goddamn respect.” I told her I couldn’t take my mask off, because underneath the mask I was smiling from ear to ear. I told her I was smiling because I had just read in the newspaper that Fred Flinstone was a fictional man and not a real person, which meant that I could marry his wife Wilma. I told the violinist I couldn’t stop smiling about this, and I knew it would be distasteful to show everyone such a big grin while Cassius was being lowered into his grave. In reality, I wasn’t smiling at all. In fact, I was scowling because of how much war and famine there has been throughout all of human history. Nonetheless, that old stereotype about violinists being the most gullible pieces of shit on the planet must have some truth to it, because she totally bought it. Idiot.
5. “I look even more like Spider-Man underneath the mask.”
In the middle of his eulogy, one of Cassius’s 11 sons looked at me and started yelling at me to take my mask off. He said it was undignified and that it was “junking up the funeral.” Before I knew it, all 11 of Cassius’s sons had gathered around me and they were all yelling at me to take off my Spider-Man mask. In my desperation I explained to them that underneath my mask, my real face looked even more like Spider-Man than the mask did. I told them that the skin on my face was bright red and had gross veins that looked like webs all over it. I also told them that I had no mouth and my eyes were giant white ovals with no pupils. In reality, I didn’t look more like Spider-Man underneath the mask. If anything, I looked mostly like Hitler due to the mustache. Still, eight of Cassius’s 11 sons seemed to buy it, and they were able to convince the other three sons to leave me alone. They thanked me for wearing a mask that made me look less like Spider-Man and I got to wear my mask for the rest of the funeral without any problems. The moral of the story is that you can get whatever you want by lying. The end.
