The death of George Turklebaum

[PPI Tim]

From the book of 666 true stories..
Lies this tale of George Turklebaum.

For over 30 years George Turklebaum worked at a large New York corporation. He was always the first on in the office each morning and the last on to leave each night. He never went to lunch with co-workers, visiited them in their offices or chatted with them around the water cooler. The only contact his colleagues had with him was "Morning George," and "Night, George," as they passed his office door each day.

One morning the entire staff found a memo waiting for them from the CEO of the firm. It read: "I regret to inform your that George Turklebaum has died. Last night a member of the office cleaning crew found George slumped over his desk. The coroner's  report says that at the time he was discovered,
George had been dead for five days."
 

[PPI Tracy]

I have heard this.  I have heard that this tall tale actually did happen, but was stretched just a bit.  He was actually dead for a day before anyone noticed him.  I wish I could find that article again.  But alas....it died.

[PPI Jason]

Yeah, five days is a bit of a stretch. Most bodies only take a day or so to really start smelling. By five days the flies would have been covering the windows. I hate that smell oooohhh I hate that smell. By far it beats anything Johnson was ever able to put out.

[PPI Tracy]

Yeah, five days is a bit of a stretch. Most bodies only take a day or so to really start smelling. By five days the flies would have been covering the windows. I hate that smell oooohhh I hate that smell. By far it beats anything Johnson was ever able to put out.

When I was in college, I observed an autopsy and the smell is unlike anything you could ever imagine. You cannot describe it if you tried.  It was all I could do not to pass out, literally.   It doesn't smell like teen spirit, I can tell you that much.  

I always wanted to go into forensics and frankly, I should have.  I have heard those that deal with it everyday say that you never get used to it and then there are those that can go without a mask and it doesn't bother them.

Why the hell am I talking about this?  I have no friggin idea.........

[PPI Karl]

In arid conditions, it's possible for a body to self-mummify, but I don't think there's any office air conditioning that could manage that.  People mistakenly believe the body is a single organism, when in fact it's a colony of living organisms.  What's thought of as "decay" is often just the body's internal organisms jumping ship and eating their way out (in a manner of speaking).  After several days, you'd certainly begin to smell that process.  After one day, maybe not.  However, you'd still have to account for a body loosening its bowels after death.

Anyway, getting down to the moral of this folktale:  it's easy to pin the responsibility onto a man who, for whatever reason, felt incapable of making friendships, or even acquaintances, in his life.  What, though, of the people around him?  Maybe he was bashful, or had Aspergers.  Maybe he felt people judged him?  Maybe he was just waiting for the right person to say "Good morning, George."  Maybe he was good at checkers, or a connoisseur of chocolate; maybe he was great in bed; maybe he lived through something so horrible that he couldn't talk to people for fear of talking about "it."  Or, maybe he just "preferred not to" (as in Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivenor:  A Story Of Wall St."--which, by the way, I think this little folktale is plagiarizing).  Isn't it also others' responsibility to include people, and to turn whatever seems to alienate them into something that makes them individual?  Maybe it's because I'm a child of the 60s, but what ever happened to the notion that we should cherish others?  And extend our humanity to them?

I'm Paul Harvey, and that's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the rest of the story.  Good day.

[SCP Ellie]

That was deep Karl. Makes me think.......