"Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you"

Fred Allen’s witty reflection exposes both the absurdity and inevitability of human existence by blending dark humor with an ironic detachment. He likens life to a “biological misadventure,” suggesting that being alive isn’t necessarily a grand design or noble purpose, but rather a chaotic and often bewildering experience. The word “misadventure” implies error, mishap, or a journey gone awry, casting life as something stumbled upon rather than intentionally embraced, an expedition fraught with unexpected challenges and pointless tribulations.

The conclusion of life is described as terminating “on the shoulders of six strange men,” conjuring the image of pallbearers carrying a coffin to its final resting place. The men’s strangeness points to the reality that, at death, we are often handled by individuals unknown to us, emphasizing the impersonal, communal rituals that mark the end of personal adventures. Death, Allen suggests, becomes a public performance in which intimacy is replaced by formal duty; the community’s response to an individual’s demise is mechanical and remote.

His wry humor peaks in the assertion that the pallbearers’ “only objective is to make a hole in one with you.” Allen adapts a golf metaphor, “hole in one”, to describe the burial, equating the journey from life to grave with the triumphant, yet impersonal, action of sinking a ball in a hole in one stroke. This comparison trivializes the once-in-a-lifetime individual journey by making it indistinguishable from a recreational pastime. Human life, with all its struggles and meaning-seeking, is humorously reduced to a single, final act executed by strangers, who are themselves most interested not in you, but in the procedural completion of their task. The entire process is both profoundly existential and comically indifferent, underscoring existential questions about meaning while maintaining an amused, sardonic distance from life’s gravity.