Biff, Biffy to his friends, people who didn't like him but didn't hate him, not HATE hate anyway, didn't know how to delete google docs. Occasionally he'd open a new doc, change his mind, and write nothing. But that blank document would be in his folder, waiting for him. You'd think he'd remember the blank one, and use it instead of starting a whole new one. But you wouldn't think that if you were one of Biffy's friends.
As far as negative traits go, not knowing how to delete google docs was not up there with murder and treason, but it wasn't exactly jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk, either. It hovered around “always late” and “forgets birthdays.” Nevertheless, Biffy knew people held it against him. And he held that against them. Biffy held against people (who held it against him that he didn't know how to delete google docs) it.
That such a stupidly grammatically accurate sentence described Biffy described Biffy is all you really need to know about him.
Including what he did one day, what he did after he woke up, what he did after he took a shower, ate breakfast, got dressed, picked up a baseball bat, and ran outside to join the riots.
Fine: he died. Baseball bat to the head. Biffed. Idiot.
No one came to Biffy's memorial service, where everything you're reading now was read. The priest doing the reading looked around and was amazed that the words he was saying out loud, that he was looking around and seeing no one, was accurate. He had a soft voice, perfect for this kind of thing, which made him smile to read, though he occasionally stumbled, which made him smile though he occasionally stumbled, and read parts twice. It wasn't easy to keep your place when you kept darting your eyes up to see if what you were saying was true.
Another way to describe Biffy: after the priest realized that what he was reading was true, in real time, his amazement turned to boredom, utter, since writing that no one came to his memorial service would of course be “accurate” if one were the sort of person to whom's memorial service no one came. That sort of useless information hit Biffy on the head. Much the same as any sentence, grammatically correct or not, that used the word “whom's,” also described him.
Biffy was born, oh god there's more? the priest thought, stop it, stop what, stop writing what I'm thinking that I'm reading, fine, in Wichita, Kansas. A cold February night, a cold hospital on a hill, though it was so long ago, it's hard to remember. The priest nodded, I said stop it, sorry. Hard to recall if Wichita even had any hills. But there he was, young Biff Sterpye, not a few seconds old, screaming his little ass off.
Here's what you need to know about Biff: the doctor who pulled him out into the world had been doing that very thing for not only more of his life than not, but also more of the day than not, so even though the scream of a newborn was supposed to happen, he got a little miffed at the noise, like geez kid, it's just birth, you don't have to scream bloody murder.
And look, yes, it was agreed that getting into the priest's head by writing his thoughts down for him to read wasn't going to happen anymore, but the priest was doing some mental arithmetic, figuring that if a doctor finishes school by, let's say, 24, then the doctor who delivered Biff and got miffed had to be at least 49 years old or so in order for him to have been delivering babies for longer than not. That's well-within the midlife crisis range. So is the next part of Biff's saga going to be that the surgeon had had enough after Biff's initial tantrum and quit his job, and that just goes to show you what kind of person Biff was? Yes, actually.
But wait, there's more. The surgeon went on to become a priest, and it was him reading this right now. Now the amazement sets in. Writing a eulogy in real-time to be read at a memorial service that no one shows up to and mentioning as such was kind of lame, really, but correctly post-event-divining that the surgeon became the priest? If you weren't reading it out loud right now you wouldn't believe it!
Moving on, Biff, born, cold night, cold hospital, etc. It's that “etc.” That's what describes Biff. Replacing an entire list of things with, not even a word, but an abbreviated word. And in this case, the etc. could be as meek as “and all that other stuff that happens when a baby is born,” or, something as all-encompassing as “he grew up, he got hit in the head with a baseball bat, he died, here we are.” That's the kind of person Biff was. Not one or the other etc.s but the possibility of both.
Biff was the kind of person who would use Schrodinger's Cat as a metaphor for those two etc.s And he'd be right, even though it's a fairly overused and tired comparison. Because, if you're starting to get the idea Biff is the one who wrote this, you'd be right, but you'd also be wrong. Schrodinger's again, crass as ever. That uneasy feeling you get when someone uses a metaphor like that: Biff
But for all of that, Biff had his good parts too. He was smart enough to say that it begs the question, the Schroeder's cat thing, what would be the mechanism for opening the box? Collapsing the waveform, “make” one of those etc.s real, the other just a ghost of probability?
Well, here's the thing, Biff, may you rest in peace. I'm getting really tired of this, this what, this making me read out loud what's been written I'm thinking. But hang on, that would mean I'm Biff. I'm the priest at my own funeral, the surgeon who birthed me. Exactly, to whit: the mechanism that collapses the wave form.
So let's all bow our heads, even though no one's here, including me, wait what, let's all bow our heads to honor the life of Biff: he was born, he became a doctor, delivered himself, had enough, became a priest, and eulogized himself in his own words. In a way, it was only in death that Biff even came to life in the first place. This eulogy being the entirety of his life. This eulogy being the entirety, waveform collapse or not, of his etc.
I'd like to close by saying I'd like to think that there's maybe a little bit of Biff in all of us, that in some way we, you and I, writer and reader, were the only ones who ever knew him, you by reading this, me by writing it on a blank google doc that I didn't know how to delete.