(Photo credit: CNN.)

After my freshman year of college, in 1985-86, I dropped out of college (temporarily, as it turned out), and went hitchhiking around the Western U.S. during the next school year. (Important disclaimer: this is not a recommended mode of travel!) One of the highlights of these journeys was my visit to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Having no car, I walked across this famous bridge, starting from the San Francisco side. It is an awesome landmark, with an incredible view. I stopped half-way across, and sat there on the bridge’s walkway for maybe half an hour, watching the waves in San Francisco Bay, as well as looking over the bridge at the Pacific Ocean. After sitting for that time, enjoying the view, I got up, and resumed my walk north, across the bridge to Marin County.

Months later, after returning home to Arkansas, I ran into statistics like these I just looked up, using Google: there were 31 suicides in 1976 from people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, 24 in 1980, and so on. I wondered: how exactly did they know? Do they just count bodies that wash up on the shore, or is there a guy with a yellow legal pad and a pencil, in a small office at the base of the bridge, getting paid by the City and County of San Francisco to watch for, and count, jumpers? And, if there is such a guy, what was he doing when I sat in the middle of the bridge in 1987 for half an hour? Was he watching me with binoculars? Was he saying to himself, perhaps out loud, “I wish that jerk up there in the black t-shirt would make up his mind, already! Jump, or get off the bridge! I’m late for my lunch break, AND I have to go to the bathroom!”

At no point have I ever been suicidal, but I still laugh thinking about that hypothetical guy with the yellow legal pad. Dark humor is, in my opinion, the best kind.