When I was a senior in high school I chatted on line at this weird site. It was a chat room provided by the Healthy Choice frozen dinner people and its intent was to provide a space for people to get together and talk about healthy choices and healthy choice products. But since it was a very well made chat format, very easy to use and at the time one of the only free real time chat sites on the internet, most of the people who used it were just people like me. I met two guys who I ended up becoming very good friends with. One was Jim Shelley who I still am in contact with today and who I met a couple years ago when he was over on the west coast. I've linked to his site here a couple times. He is in China. The other was this guy Brandon Shaw who I chatted with for about a year and a half and then met when I went down to LA with my freshman roommate in college Tasha over the winter break. We met in January of 1997 and things went pretty well. We continued to write for a few months after and then he just stopped writing to me altogether with no explanation. I wrote him and he didn't respond. I was upset but I got over it. I actually can't really remember that time really well because I had a lot of other stuff going on. I remember the springtime of my freshman year being really really fun. But I remember sitting at the computer hall in the basement of gist hall after we met and reading emails from him. And I remember trying a few times over the summer when I as home never hearing anything.
So in an attempt to figure out who this anonymous commenter is, because I just can't let it go, I googled him thinking that it could be him and the first hit that came up was this...
UT Virtual Statue Tour: Southwest Campus: Brandon Shaw MemorialInscription: "Brandon Shaw 1976-1997" written on the plaque inside of the box. Brandon Shaw, 20, was a UT architecture student who was murdered along with ...
And he was an architecture student at UT. And he was born in 1976. And the spring of January 1997 was the last time I heard from him.
So that link brought me to this site - memorial statue
So he was murdered that summer. And that is why I never heard from him again. I don't really know how I am supposed to feel about this because I tried really hard to be mad at him and just push him out of my consciousness and I succeeded fairly well. But If I had known then that he was murdered I would have been totally destroyed. But I found out 8 years later instead. And I can't stop thinking about it but I am not mourning or anything. I am not grief stricken.
In September of that same year one of the closest friends from my childhood, with whom I had a very bad falling out in high school, died in a car accident. Will and Justin came to Yreka with me when I went home to the funeral. I was kind of messed up for a while after that happened so it was probably for the best that I didn't know that he died 2 months earlier. But the strange part is when Leah died, we hadn't really been in touch since our sophomore year of high school when we stopped speaking to each other completely. So when she died I felt kind of the same way I feel now. She was a huge part of my life but I hated her.
Anyway, carpe diem and all that crap.
16 comments:
That sucks. As normal as death is, it is really fucking wacky when it happens to people you know.
So now, if I ever just stop writing you, you can't get mad at me until after you check the obits. And at that point you would have cooled down. Not that I really write to you anyway . . .
Oh my god mandy, that is the craziest story ever! I'm so sorry to hear that he met with a tragic ending. What a horrible thing to happen to anyone, the way he was murdered.
I remember well that trip you me and Will made to Yreka, that was a weird time. It was so much fun but the whole reason for the trip was for your friend's funeral. I always forget about that part, I just remember the fun times with you and Will. Weird how memory kind of patches over certain things.
I know! It is crazy. I have vivid memories of the funeral and of the service before and I remember going to greenhorn park with you and Will and riding the train and I think we went to Ashland but I can't remember that part at all.
And I am all paranoid now of losing touch with people and not knowing if they are dead or not. And what if I die unexpectedly? Who will tell my friends scattered all over the place?
Dear Prudence,
Let me see you smile.
Dear Prudence,
Like a little child.
The clouds will be a daisy chain,
So let me see you smile again!
Dear Prudence,
Won't you let me see you smile?
Shocking and insane. I'm very sorry about it. And glad you didn't know at the time. Leah was enough for one year.
Yesterday I was going to tell you this huge long story about an anonymous commenter on my friend Doug's blog and how it turned into this huge drama but it was sort of entertaining to me because I didn't get involved and Marigold even wrote fan fiction about it, but damn...I'm going to hold off on that for now. I'm really sorry about your friend. That word, "murdered" makes it even more of a shock.
In the meantime, the moral of the story I was going to tell is never give that anonymous commenter your phone number. Stupid, stupid.
Gnatish: Best friend forever? Sure! Once I was in the computer lab in college and this girl sat beside me and was watching me type. And she was like "wow, you type really fast." And I was like, "thanks." And then she saw the band-aids on my thumbs and she said, "oh my god! Do you pick the skin on your thumbs? So do I!" ANd then she shoved her bloody red thumb stumps in my face. I think she thought we would be best friends forever. We probably could have been. Oh well.
Sara J: Yeah, murdered. Whoever knew anyone who was murdered? People die, accidentally. And they kill themselves, and they die of diseases. But people are murdered in movies. And I would never give anyone anonymous my anything. Except my vehement loathing. And maybe my virginity if it was still intact.
Mandy, I'm really sorry about your friend. I remember you talking about him, way back in the day. It must have been really unnerving to just find out about his death like that, while randomly googling him.
And... I still pick my thumbs and chew on them. Do you guys want to start a club? I think we need to take pride in it. If picking and chewing at the skin and cuticles of my thumbs until they bleed is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
I think it makes me tough. And we could start a gang instead of a club. And the initiation would be brutal. BRUTAL! We could get jackets emblazened with bloody thumb graphics. Steve could design them. And Tom Robbins could write a book about us. And then it could be adapted into a movie and we could play ourselves.
Apants said, "And I would never give anyone anonymous my anything"
granted, you may not give an anonymous person anything directly, but by publishing the things you have already published on your blog, literally anyone who wants to know where you live can find out in the time it takes to do a computer search. you put a picture up of your family and gave each of their names. sorry old girl, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out the name of your brother. You stated that you live with him on your profile and voila, anyone who is interested can learn where you live plus all kinds of other things.
when you blab your personal information all over the web, you can't turn around and expect to have privacy, silly. personally, I wouldn't care to have the whole world knowing every detail of my life... it seems sort of uncivilized to me, sort of barbarian. no offense intended, just a difference in sensibilities. I'm not a fan of the gerry-springer, 'let's all air our dirty laundry in public' kind of indecorous behavior.
i mean really, why do you think closets were invented?
post script to apants:
you know apants, you're being infantile about your anonymous poster. anonymous could call you and talk to you directly if anonymous had the slightest interest in doing so or visit you at your cardiology office. you have made that possible by vomiting out your private life onto a public blog. duh!
the contention that you are upset by someone commenting and choosing to remain anonymous is an inevitable part of the transparent society (aka gerry-springerville) you have obviously embraced; you should either accept that reality or stop revealing yourself in a public forum.
it is one thing to expose yourself in public, but you have incautiously exposed others who may or may not wish to have public attention. i, for one, would never in a million years publish the names of my relatives and their children to a global readership. how reckless is that? your misapprehension is that you believe no one is reading your blog. the reality is, you have no idea of, or control over who may be reading it; a worldlywise/sophisticated person would have been far more circumspect about divulging personal information than you have been.
wise up, grow up, and clam up if you can't take the heat of the spotlight, apants!
These friends of mine who have adult children my age lost a son when he was around 23 or 24. Lost him, like he dropped off the face of the earth. Never found a body and never found any clues whatsoever of what may have happened in spite of much prolonged investigation.
I make my "adult" children call me frequently because I don't want them to drop off the planet without a clue. Or get murdered. And such.
Why are you letting her post her inanities again?
It was an accident.
Whoa. Somebody is ka-raz-ay!
Maybe you should change your name and your social security number and go into the witness protection program. Or better yet, maybe you should lock yourself in a soundproof, windowless room so no one can ever see your face or hear your screams. Because, by God, that is probably the only way to protect yourself from the evils of society. I can't believe you are so reckless as to walk about in the streets, all exposed to the world. I bet you show waiters your ID when you want to buy a beer. You're probably the type that even gets mail and will someday be murdered by some psycho mailman. I bet you have even said your sister's name outloud before within earshot of another human being. Or worse! The childrens' names! WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!
My God, you ARE a barbarian!
Thank God you don't have any stalker-types in your life to take advantage of your unworldly ways.
Oh wait. . .
Oh, and I forgot to mention that you should make sure you take a laptop into your panic room. So that you could faithfully, constantly and daily anonymously watch strangers and/or aquaintances and make comments on their barbaric blogs in a stalker-type fashion.
You know, like a civilized person.
chatting on a healthy chopice forum about regular crap is the funniest and most badass thing i've ever heard of. i am totally cracking up!
-maggie
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