While in line at Chipotle today, I read their sign announcing early closure on New Year’s Eve and complete closure on New Year’s Day.

The final sentence read:

We sincerely hope you can survive waiting a couple days for your first burrito of 2009.

And it immediately hit me that someone out there won’t survive to see that first burrito of 2009. Even now, midday on the next-to-last day of the year, someone was reading that sign in Chipotle and chuckling mildly at the witty sarcasm and imagining the first of many burritos they’d be chowing down in the bright shiny new annum to come. And they were sure that those burritos, like so many of their presupposed plans, would unfold like an infinite accordion before them to build a bridge to an unforeseeable but infinitely remote future.

And they will die before the year.

And they have no idea.

The moral of this moment may be “be careful what you’re sarcastic about.” Or perhaps just “be careful.” Or even, given how most of you are probably reacting to the tenor of this post, “the most basic and predictable realities of life are soul-crushingly depressing when truly considered beyond a passing whim.”

Bon appetit.