I die at seventeen, because I’m currently twenty-one, so dying at seventeen would make me either invincible or the proud owner of a time machine. I’ll go with the latter.

I buy my time machine at forty-four, because you could call predicting a type of four-shadowing. Since I’m smart enough to make that clever little play on words, I’m smart enough to know I won’t be inventing a time machine any time soon.

I don’t have an exact age for when I would use the time machine, but I do have an ideal time of my life. I want to be happy, in the prime of my writing career, and on the cusp of writing my masterpiece, which hopefully won’t be an op-ed about the educational benefits of picking your nose. See, I don’t actually need to do whatever my potentially greatest accomplishment is, especially since I’m ninety-three percent certain it will end up being a story about picking your nose.

In the ideal time of my life, I am a suave, devilishly handsome fifty-three year old who time travels sparingly because he’s afraid of speeding lights. Using my time machine, I travel to visit some dinosaurs, because if I have to choose between dinosaurs and that time I had sex with a Victoria’s Secret model in my late twenties, dinosaurs win. Dinosaurs are the shit.

While visiting the dinosaurs, some inconsiderate Fukuisaurus (Google it. I dare you.) starts kicking my time machine because, one, the machine is parked next to her nest, and, two, that Fukuisaurus is a total dick. Excuse me for not knowing where to find a good place to park in the middle of the Early Cretaceous period. Give a man a second to move his $500,000 baby before you go all Tyrannosaurus Rex on its ass (I know, great price on that time machine, right? I had a coupon.).

Thanks to Dino Temper Tantrum, my time machine is damaged. Unfortunately, I am not aware of this. When I try to travel home, my greatest fear becomes reality. I return to a time when I was in high school.

When I see my shaggy-haired, acne covered, emo music listening self, I have a sudden and uncontrollable mental breakdown. This results in a lot of yelling, running around, and eventually stabbing seventeen year old me in the face with a sword, because using a knife would be equivalent to ordering a small sized ice cream on a hot summer day. What can I say? I’m just a man who is willing to treat himself, even in his final moment.

After realizing that it’s going to take some time for the screaming me rolling around on the floor, like I’m a rodeo bull with a seizure, to bleed out, and actual me to comprehend the pain of the newly formed memory of myself being stabbed in the face, I seize the opportunity to lecture my former self.

“You’re such a cliché,” I say, “with your tight jeans, apathetic attitude, and ugly face. Couldn’t you have been an original screw up? You could have been the first screw up to wear slacks or to adopt a puppy or to have plastic surgery. You could have been great!”

As I’m ranting about how much time my former self wasted watching porn, seventeen year old me dies, and current me disappears. Does it suck more to get stabbed in the face or to never have existed past a certain point in my life after having clearly just experienced the last thirty-six years of my life? Fuck you for that riddle, space-time continuum.

As for my will, I don’t have a lot that needs to happen after I die, but I need what I do desire to occur to be carried out with an absolutely anal attention to detail.

I want to be cremated. My ashes should be separated into twenty-three equal portions. These twenty-three portions should be placed into twenty-three separate containers. Whether the containers are small boxes or tiny sacks doesn’t matter, so long as my ashes won’t leak, and you don’t Bedazzle the containers.

On the back of my will should be a list of the twenty-three people who most pissed me off in life (My birthday is on December 23rd, so the number denotes a dying gift to myself that I’m sure I’ll enjoy much more than all the flowers and overly-emotional letters I get from everyone else.). The addresses are listed next to the peoples’ names. Please mail each of these people one container of my ashes. In the package, include this letter:

Dear [Person’s Name],
This is a container of Alex Rosenfeld’s ashes. Alex recently became the first person to ever commit suicide by means of time traveling and murdering himself. In his will, Alex specifically requested that you receive a portion of this timeless human treasure. Please enjoy.
Affectionately,
The Unfortunate Soul Who Had To Carry Out This Final Dying Wish

Do not attempt to raise me from the dead, as life will suck once my penis decomposes.

That said, the following question may be raised.

Why do I want to murder myself before I accomplish supreme awesomeness?

I will now say something both deep and meaningful.

I have no need to achieve greatness, only to aspire to it.

A permitted follow up question.

Is this the right way to live?

I don’t care what people think. Time machine permitting, I’m dying to find out.

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Alex Rosenfeld loves to write more than he likes to wear pants, which is good, because he hears that it’s hard to afford pants on a writer’s salary. Follow Alex on Twitter, check out his blog, and wear pants, because these are all polite things to do.