Surely this was a mistake; Evil Knievel could not truly be dead. This is the man who jumped the Grand Canyon, the man who broke damn near every bone in his body. This man was the sole reason that I tried to jump my bike over a gully while camping when I was 10. As I re-read this news, my hand made its way down to the scar on my leg that serves as a constant reminder of how Mr. Knievel touched my life...in the form of a jagged tree branch in the bottom of a ravine.

The shock of this had me speechless for the rest of my class. Granted, I was silent most of the time in there, but I was neither unconscious nor hung over—I was just stunned stupid. Evil Knievel, the man who laughed in the face of death for years and years had finally succumbed to that dirty bitch. It just didn’t register to me; it was as if the Energizer Bunny stopped plodding along, or Scrubs stopped making me giggle like a little girl, or Superman became a paraplegic. It just couldn’t happen.

This man was the inspiration for a million thrill-seeking idiots, the reason Jackass made an appalling amount of money and two movies. This red, white and blue jumpsuit-sporting angel is directly responsible for roughly half of the videos on YouTube. Never again will I be able to laugh my ass off at some moron crippling himself feeling a little twinge of sadness. The man, the myth, the legend, had made his final jump. He traded in his helmet for a halo and a harp.

Often imitated, never duplicated, the Evil one is now jumping buses in the sky. Let us hope the clouds are much softer than his previous landings.