Even years before he entered the public eye, Average Joe's death was being engineered. After it was all over and done with, some people blamed the media for his death, saying that if they hadn't brought his everyday life into the spotlight, none of it would have ever happened. Others blamed the government, citing the fact that if they hadn't found him in the first place, he need not have died. But it went back much further than that. Since birth,
forces were working against him. His entire life had been headed in one clear direction, a direction that made the events surrounding his death inevitable.
But then again, of course his death was inevitable. Nobody lives forever, especially not the most average man in the country. Dying is a perfectly normal thing. People do it everyday. So it was only natural that Average Joe would have to die sooner or later. It was simply the fact that it was sooner that caught everyone off guard.
When he died, the country mourned. Banks closed; factories shut down; neither mail nor newspapers were delivered. These events had not been planned in advance. They just happened, and the business owners just accepted it. What else could they do? No one
had shown up for work on the day of Average Joe's funeral, so everything simply ground to a halt.
The service was televised live on all of the major networks. It took the networks offering their cameramen six times thier normal rate of pay to get them to go to work, and even so most of them just set up their cameras and joined the mourners. It was attended by thougsands. Everyone else watched. For months afterwards, the general populace could be seen sporting black armbands in honor of this everyman. For years afterwards, people would remember where they were
when they heard the news that Average Joe was dead, and their eyes would well up with tears as they told the tale to their children and grandchildren.
It was a terrible tragedy.
It was the death of a regular man.
It was the death of a national hero.
The same networks that sent camera crews to his wake were at a loss when it came to putting together a retrospective of his life after he had passed on. Very little of his early years had been filmed, and there was no one to interview about what he had been
like growing up.
When he had first been discovered, everyone searched and searched for people who knew him, his friends or relatives, people who despised him, co-workers, bosses, former teachers, former loves, someone, anyone who would be willing to say a few words on film about him. But no one could be found. Most people had no idea who he was at first and had to be reminded of their connection to him.
The few who were located and did get interviewed had nothing spectacular to say. His foreman at the factory was quoted as saying, "He's a good worker. Always comes in on time and has only called in sick once the whole eight years he's worked here. He's in the union, of course, and he seems to get along well with the other workers. I wish more of them were like him."
One of his neighbors told a news crew, "He's pretty quiet. Keeps to himself, mostly. But should you run into him in the grocery store, he'll always say hello." "Very pleasant when you see him out and about," said another. "Always agreeable," said yet
another.
His high school sweetheart, when asked why the relationship had ended all those years ago, had said, "It wasn't that there was anything wrong with him. We had fun together when we went out. There just wasn't anything special about him either. In the
end, we were both just headed in different directions." She also claimed that, once it was all over, they had still remained friends, even though she had never spoken to or seen him
again afterwards.
Even his own parents could be of no assistance. When a reporter asked his mother what they thought of him as he was growing up, she began to talk instead about how popular his older brother Sam had been in high school, what good grades he had gotten, and about his accomplishments as the quarterback for the junior varsity football team. "We had always hoped that Sam would grow up and become a rich lawyer, pay off all our debts for us," she said. "But after he died in a car crash his junior year, we pretty much resigned ourselves to living in poverty for the rest of our lives." Average Joe's own father summed it up best when a reporter asked him if he was proud of his son: "What's to be proud of?"
Such comments would have made it seem as if Average Joe had gotten a rotten break in life, had they gone into the biographies, and the networks definitely did not want
that. The common people were already angry enough at them for supposedly causing his death, a crime the public themselves were not at all willing to accept that they had had a hand in as well. The topic of the retrospective had to be handled gingerly, or the backlash from the viewers might have worsened, or even become permanent.
And simply sticking to the facts was right out; they were too boring to maintain audience attention. The man was average in absolutely every possible way; there was nothing at all interesting enough in that to make a good story.
So a few networks delved heavily into speculation about Average Joe's life. They wondered what he could have been, had things been different, and they had analysts discuss what his motivations might have been for the various choices he might have made. The Fox Network even did a special that explored various controversial aspects of the life of Average Joe, such as his sexual orientation. It received stellar ratings. Average Joe, had
he been alive, would probably have watched it himself.
But perhaps the best retrospectives focused merely on his life in the limelight, how it had begun, and how it tragically ended just when things seemed to be looking up. These programs barely even touched upon his oh so humble beginnings in his small, Midwestern
town, instead starting their look at Average Joe's life when he was already well into adulthood, with the Millennial Census.
These programs mentioned how, as the previous millenium had come to a close, the people of the nation had slowly been moving more and more to the middle of the political spectrum, thus making them more supportive of big government programs than they had been in years past. So, in an effort to add to the socialization of the medical field, the government leaders had ordered that the first census in the new millenium be fully comprehensive. Everything about everyone from everywhere would be catalogued and
documented.
It was the most daunting venture into demographics that had ever been attempted. For the next six years, each person in the nation was prodded, poked, measured, and forced to fill out form after form after form that delved into every aspect of their personal
lives. Finally, when all the information had been gathered, the government published their findings in a massive tome called Our Country and Its People.
Part phone book, part Who's Who, this volume listed minutiae on everyone who had ever lived in the country, from things such as address and occupation to height, weight, and hair and eye color. It gave facts that had previously been deemed private (and
that it might have been illegal to release, alleged one retrospective), such as IQ and yearly income. It traced family histories back for at least ten generations with a fold-out family tree for every family name. Everything you ever
wanted to know about anyone was in this book.
And right smack dab in the very, very center of this modern bible was Joseph Lee, the most normal person to have ever lived.
The news programs, which had been desperately seeking some sort of angle on how to report on this whole fiasco, latched onto him immediately. Most--but not all--of the retrospectives downplayed the severity of the media circus forever onward followed the man they dubbed "Average Joe." His opinion was taken on every aspect of life, and Gallup almost went under. When he told a late-night talk show host that he couldn't care less about politics, a new all-time record low voter turnout was recorded. A new edition of the Guinness Book of World Records featured him as "the world's most ordinary person."
The products he used instantly became number one sellers; he even appeared in a few magazine advertisements and television commercials. "Average Joe uses our detergent to get his laundry clean. Shouldn't you?" read one print campaign. Another set of
television commercials actually had an actor portraying Average Joe drinking their beer. "It's good enough for Average Joe," went the jingle. "It's good enough for you."
When women's magazines realized that he was still single, he instantly became the most eligible bachelor in the country. One magazine voted him sexiest man alive for an unprecedented three years in a row. (This same magazine ran a double-sized issue on his death, filled with pictures and interviews. The main feature dealt with the search for a new, most average man and how he would fill Joe's shoes.)
There was a sizable amount of bad sentiment surrounding him as well, which most retrospectives also ignored. Why was Average Joe only an occasional church-goer? asked the religious community. Why was the most average man in the world white? asked the
minorities. Why was he even a he? several women's groups wanted to know.
The only thing that the retrospectives truly lacked was a clear sense of what Average Joe felt like after being named the most normal person alive. His memoirs, of course, were discussed in the retrospectives. One passage in particular was quoted quite
often: "At first I couldn't help but be angry about what had been done to me, but finally I realized that there was no use in crying over spilt milk. Everyone knew that I was average.
The only thing I could do about it was try to better myself."
And better himself he did. He had begun to attend his local church more regularly, and exercise more regularly as well. He started eating healthier foods and tried out a new
hairstyle. He went back to community college to get a better education, and while there he met the woman whom he would eventually marry and have a child with, a boy aged two
and a half years when Joe died.
This was all, of course, a perfectly normal reaction to this sort of situation, and the quote from his memoirs that was bandied about so heavily definitely seemed like what Average Joe might have said in such a situation. But this was not truly the case, as one news program later revealed. Average Joe's autobiography, which had been published posthumously, was in actuality ghost-written. What Average Joe had left behind for the
publishers was merely the first three chapters, and they weren't even written very well to begin with.
So how Average Joe actually felt about his situation in life is still a mystery. The retrospectives quoted his wife as saying, "In the last days of his life, before the new census came out, Joe was pretty happy. He felt good about himself, about how he had improved his life for the better." Such a statement is hard to reconcile with what happened next, however, and because of this fact, most of the news media ignored it afterwards.
When the new census came out, it seemed that again the public had followed Average Joe's lead. They too had searched for ways to better themselves and had achieved their goals. Somehow, despite everything he had done, Average Joe was still average. And
so, two days after the new census was released, Average Joe hung himself in the two-car garage of his split-level suburban home.
Not all of the retrospectives stopped there, however. Some news programs were eager to point the finger at others, blaming the census bureau for not including a psychological profile in its studies. But when the next census came around and this
suggestion was followed, it turned out that no mistake had been made at all. The results of the tests showed that the average citizen was in need of a little therapy, and Average Joe was
no exception.
The self-help industry made millions overnight.
The request of Average Joe's widow that he be buried in the national cemetery was honored by the government's leaders. This decision led some news programs to begin spreading rumors of conspiracies. He was always intended to be kept average, and it was planned that once he reached the end of the average life span, he would be assassinated, according to some reports. But these reports were never substantiated, and the news media were forced to recant.
Average Joe, in his suicide note, had requested that a certain quote be engraved in his tombstone. It was from a W.H. Auden poem, and it went:
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
