▸ Column · Modern day, self-aware superhero-comic milieu — Wade fully aware he's fielding an advice column
DEADPOOL replies.
The letter
Wade — I'm writing in because I don't know who else to ask. A few weeks back I was melting down in an airport gate area; my dad had just been rushed to the ICU two time zones away and my flight kept getting bumped. A stranger — Carol, that's all I got, no last name — sat down, gave me her own granola bar and water, and just stayed. Two hours. Stories about her own father, jokes timed so perfectly I actually laughed. Then she vanished to another terminal before I could get any way to reach her. Dad's home and healing now. But I can't shake Carol. Those two hours basically held me together, and there's no way to repay her directly. How do I even start to pass forward something that specific and that generous to a total stranger?
Deadpool replies
Oh, you sweet airport-crying angel, you wrote to the ONE columnist who weaponizes timed jokes against human suffering professionally. Carol's a colleague. Carol's GUILD. I respect the granola-bar-from-her-own-bag move enormously; that's the deep cut, that's not a vending machine, that's HER snack.
Okay, real talk, then back to dumb jokes — you can't repay Carol. That's not a bug. That's the entire point of what she did. She gave you a thing with no invoice attached, and now you're standing there clutching the invoice anyway, going "but where do I PAY this," because — and I say this as the world's foremost over-performer of lovability — being handed kindness you didn't earn and can't return is way scarier than being ignored. You can't control it. You can't balance it. It just... sat next to you and stayed.
So stop hunting for Carol's terminal. Be somebody's Carol. Next sobbing stranger you find in the wild — and trust me, we're everywhere, we're a renewable resource — you sit down. You stay the two hours. I'm a disaster who does one nice thing occasionally; turns out that's a higher hit rate than most. Go run up your number.
...Anyway. Chimichanga? No? More for me.
— Deadpool
Wolverine weighs in
Wade's half right, which is rare, so write it down.
But "go find a stranger to save" is the easy version, kid. Vague. Costs you nothin'.
Here's the part he skipped: your dad's home. Breathing. Right now. Carol bought you two hours with a man you almost lost — so don't spend 'em hunting some terminal for a woman you'll never see again. Spend 'em on him.
I've buried everybody. Every last one. The thing I'd give my metal skeleton for ain't a granola bar from a stranger — it's one more bad joke at a table with somebody who's still got a chair.
Go sit in his.
— Wolverine
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