In order to be funny there usually has to be some truth to the tragedy. I don't have room to write here about humor being based in tragedy but I can tell you that in order for Americans to laugh at this commercial they must find at least part of it to be true or feel true. And I'm betting that even Christians are chuckling at this commercial. Maybe the Guardian Angel acts as a metaphor for the little misfortunes of life or maybe people literally believe in angels and wonder where the hell they are. Either way the Guardian Angel comes off as a lazy, no-good bastard who lets us stub our toe, dent our car, trip over the dog and unintentionally insult a very large bodybuilder while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store.

Do people really believe God is looking out for them? That each person is assigned an angel as a sort of personal bodyguard? How would you provide evidence for that? For every time you have had a narrow escape someone else has lost their life. For every time you have prayed to find your keys, someone else has renounced God because they couldn't find them. It's all about interpreting the good to be God and the bad to be God's will or that God doesn't care. Hardly ever does anyone consider that God may just not be there. I would suggest that the good and bad are just life as we know it and that God's angels belong to childhood imagination.

I have a Guardian Angel story from my youth. It was Junior High and I believed in God and while not yet a fervent, fundie-type Christian (my Highschool to College years) I was a practicing churchgoer and believer. My parents took us to the Bahamas for a vacation, a once in a lifetime event though I'd like to return. We stayed in a resort that overlooked a cove where the waters were so blue and clear that you could see the coral and marine life underneath. Absolutely beautiful. As well as the women in bikinis which was a bonus for a kid who was starting to feel the pumping of hormones.

The one problem with the cove was a safety issue. Both snorkelers and boats occupied the same space. Boats would rip out of the cove at high speeds to take tourists scuba diving or sight-seeing at remote locations. Snorkelers would explore all around the cove and even near the exit where the boats plowed through to get to the open ocean waters. I personally spent my time snorkeling alone and would even dive down to the ocean floor to find shells and visit with the other fish that were too shy to be near the shore. I even saw a barracuda in the deeper waters.

On one particularly deep dive I came back up to the surface to get air and found myself facing down a tourist boat speeding straight for me--head on! It swerved and barely missed mangling my body in what would have for sure ended a very pleasant vacation. The driver circled back around and asked if I was okay. I nodded my timid head yes even as my body was shaking and then of course this idiot took off again. I mean Jesus, he had almost run over a kid at high speed.

As I swam back to the shore I started to cry. A reaction I couldn't help. The adrenaline was draining and my body began to felt light and weak. I made it to the sand where my Dad met me. He, always vigilant it seemed, had witnessed the incident, made sure I was okay and then went and had a talk with the resort management. Whatever he said worked because in the next hour all of the boat drivers were going slow and looking for swimmers as they made their way out of the cove.

Soon after facing death I recalled the sensation of being pushed to one side as the boat approached me and this I attributed to a guardian angel--which is why I'm telling this story. As long as I was a Christian I maintained that someone had saved me from the boat that day. But now of course the answer is simple. That pushing to one side wasn't a guardian angel, it was the wake caused by the boat swerving and driving right past me. Water pushed me, almost threw me to the side; there was no need to make that a supernatural intervention but to a religiously-minded kid I interpreted that as something otherworldly.

And I'm sure there are lots of people with guardian angel stories similar to mine. Narrow escapes and coincidences they attribute to God's employees. But God's employees are either poorly organized or God needs to do some outsourcing. I don't know who? Maybe there are outdated paganistic beings who cross the heavenly border illegally which could be put to work--at a fair wage of course. Whatever God is doing he's doing it half-assed. There needs to be some organization. People are only being saved part of the time. I realize God sets people up for accidents so as to make his glory known--however is a broken toe really necessary? How much glory is there in that? And tripping over your dog while naked just means that either your guardian angel is laughing at you or he intentionally told the dog to trip you (angels can speak to dogs y'know. That's why you'll see your dog bark at seemingly nothing and tell it to shut up).

So in the end, the Capital One Guardian Angel is funny because deep down I think we know that angels must slack off or not exist at all. Why all the misery? Not the floods, tornadoes and wars, I mean the little miseries. If angels can't protect us from the little miseries I wouldn't put much trust in them to protect us from the big miseries. God needs a human resources manager. In the meantime I'll try to look out for myself and make sure I have health insurance.