I hope that after I die, people will say of me: “That guy sure owed me a lot of money.”

This line is characteristic of Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts,” the deadpan, faux-philosophical one-liners popularized on NBC’s Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s and later collected in books under the same banner. Handey’s comic persona often treats big subjects—death, legacy, morality—with a deliberately naïve sincerity that collapses into an absurd twist. Here, the conventional wish to be remembered fondly after death is undercut by a petty, practical grievance: unpaid debts. The humor depends on the mismatch between the solemnity of posthumous reputation and the mundane resentment of creditors, a typical Handey move that satirizes self-image and sentimental epitaphs.

In Jack Handey’s trademark “Deep Thoughts” style, the line parodies the solemn wish to be remembered well after death. Instead of aspiring to moral virtue or public achievement, the speaker hopes to be recalled for something petty and inconvenient: unpaid debts. The humor comes from the collision between the grandeur of posthumous legacy and the banal reality of money owed, as well as the implied selfishness—wanting to be memorable even if it’s for irritating reasons. It also gently mocks how reputation can be shaped by trivial, transactional memories rather than lofty ideals.