Damned right it was a big story in Canada. Laura Gainey: her father Bob is a hockey icon, and has been for decades.
I dated a girl in high school a few times, well walked her home and necked in the garage would be more accurate. She went to a different high school than I. Just after school resumed, grade 11 , she was walking home alone and was picked up by a car load of friends from her high school. She asked to drive, since she had a beginner’s permit it was legal. They went out on a newly opened 4 lane highway with a 100 KPH speed limit. She touched gravel with the front wheels on a slight curve and didn’t have the experience to bring things back under control. The car rolled numerous times killing 3 or 4 of the 6 or 7 in it. She was one of them. Ouch.
This past Thursday, a member of my World of Warcraft guild died (in real life, that is). He’d gone into the hospital the previous weekend with some chest pain and left arm numbness, it was discovered that his aorta was dissecting, and he died on the operating table. Forty years old. Great guy, fun to play with, always in a good mood, always willing to help people out in game. Forty years old.
When I first started using online personal ads, I met a guy who lived in my old college town. We emailed back and forth for weeks…some really great letters. We finally met for coffee, and just didn’t click, and I never heard from him again. About a year or so later, he was in the news when he died after being attacked by a swarm of bees he had disturbed while mowing. He called for help, but the rescue crews couldn’t get to him in time because the street names in the develpment he was in did not correspond with the street names on the fire department’s map, because they had recently been changed by the developer. The bizarre and tragic part was that he was the real estate developer who had changed the names. I still wonder about him, if he ever found someone to love. The news reports were vague about his family…most didn’t mentiona any, one mentioned a wife, and one mentioned the daughter that I knew about. I’ve often wondered if the wife reference was to his ex-wife who still lived in the same town. I lost all his emails when AOL banned me, and I really wish I could read them again.
I grew up in a semi-rural town. All the kids in the area knew each other. Jimmy was a smart dude and a great football player. He smoked a lot of pot and all kinds of other drugs. His folks had money, so he always had great dope and hung with older guys. So I knew him and hung out a few times but he wasn’t a close friend.
I moved back to town in my late 20’s and was talking to a mutual friend when Jimmy’s name came up. Come to find out a few years ago he washed out of college and eventually went to rehab. He was clean and sobor for a year or so when he fell asleep at the wheel and died when he hit a tree.
15 years of a waste of talent and starting to get his shit together. What a waste.
I’m going to my 20 year reunion in two weeks and I dread hearing who else died.