Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

At work on Friday, I stood up and loudly asked, “Who here is sick of the Chilean miners?” I was trying to be funny, but nonetheless, I was met with stony silence. Nobody is sick of the Chilean miners, because they are cool as hell! In fact, I think all of us have wondered to ourselves, across the span of 69 days that the miners were trapped underground, how we would have borne the agony and uncertainty of their ordeal. Personally, I would not have fared well.

For starters, I would have been the person to cry out “We’re all gonna die!” the minute I found out we were trapped. In fact, I bet I would be the miner who yelled, “We’re all going to die!” every single time I stepped on the elevator to go down to the mine. I yell that at work every time I step in an elevator, so I don’t see why this would be any different. PS, I am banned from most elevators at work. And I have a low tolerance for discomfort. This past winter, my son and I went running on a cold and snowy day, and I promptly found the nearest snow bank, crawled onto it, told him, “You go on without me, it’s my time,” closed my eyes, and waited to die. My son gave me a quizzical look and said, “We can still see our house, Mom. I don’t think it’s your time.” It turns out he was right, but the point is that my first instincts are just to die. Some people are fighters, and some people are destined to be eaten when everyone turns cannibal.

Speaking of cannibalism, I would be the miner suggesting that we knock off the closest, juiciest looking person for a snack. I hear that the miners subsisted on two spoonfuls of tuna and a half glass of milk every 48 hours until they were discovered. That is not enough food for me, so I would find a knife and start cutting off sections of people’s butts when they weren’t looking. Sorry, but hunger makes me crabby. And stabby. Conversely, I can’t pretend that the other miners wouldn’t consider me Meal Number One when it was survival-of-the-fittest time. I am probably stringy and undelicious, but the other miners would see it as their only chance to stop my incessant complaining.

And that’s the next reason why I would never make it as a trapped Chilean miner: I complain a lot. I am certain that there was an unspoken code in the mine: let’s stay positive and let’s not mention all of the things we’re missing. But that just doesn’t sound like me. I would be the one complaining about how the cave wasn’t “homey” enough and about how Edison Pena needed to shut the fuck up already about how great Elvis was. I would complain a LOT about how the lavatory stunk, and how I observed some people not washing their hands after a poop. When everyone sang the Chilean national anthem to keep their spirits up, I would roll my eyes and ask them if they’d ever heard Finland’s national anthem. “Now that’s a national anthem,” I would say. And if we did resort to cannibalism, I’d be like, “Damn, guys, Pedro’s ass is totally overcooked.”

And we all know that, during the rescue, I would be the one to get stuck in the rescue shaft. And it would be, like, ten feet from the cave, so all of the miners would have to suffer through listening to me scream, “Goddammit, I can’t believe this piece of shit is stuck! You would think with 69 goddamn days those fucking assholes would make a rescue capsule that worked! I cannot fucking believe this! What the hell else did they have to do for 69 DAYS? Couldn’t they have tested this fucking piece of shit before sending it down here just to BREAK like a cheap piece of shit K-Mart brand plastic motherfucking toy car?” And on and on I would continue, each moment producing fresh fits of outrage until the miners found some sort of cave-dwelling dragon to send up the shaft to kill me.

So, let’s all take a moment and bow our heads in gratitude that we, with all of our peculiar foibles and flaws, were not among the 33 Chilean miners. They are brave, courageous human beings, and they have brought to the world an understanding of what true indomitable spirit, teamwork, and perhaps a little grace from above look like. In the words of a famous Chilean, “la cocina está detrás de la tienda.” Roughly translated, this means, “the human spirit will not be conquered.” Indeed.