For those who don’t know the song, it’s about all of the author’s friends that he grew up with who died. Mostly from drug overdoses, murders, suicide, etc.
I was thinking of this song today and thinking of people I’ve known that have died. Not aunts and uncles or grandparents or teachers or babies; just people in my peer group. Friends and cousins and such.
I’m only 27 and it seems like I’ve known a disproportionate number of people around my age who have died. At least compared to my wife who I think has known zero. I did a little mental tally today and I’m not sure I got everyone. It sounds morbid but some deaths are like when you have sex with someone; it’s a really big deal at first but 10 years later your memory of it is either non-existent or so faint you question whether or not it really happened. Two of the people here were pretty good friends whom I forgot until the last minute. These people range from good friends I grew up with to cousins to people I knew for most of my school years but did not really hang out with much.
-11 car accidents (all but 1 male)
-3 suicides (2 male)
-3 ODs (2 male)
-1 ran over by a semi truck under suspicious circumstances (female)
-1 shot by police while in his car (unarmed :mad::()
-1 fell off a car and got ran over by it while “ghostriding” (guess the sex :rolleyes:)
-1 aneurysm (male)
I guess the moral of the story is don’t drive a car in the county I grew up in. There’s black ice in the winter, it can be foggy all year, and the roads are old, narrow, curvy, and lined with trees and telephone poles.
Hmm, that seems like a lot of people. For me, I guess it depends on the age range – are you going within 5 years of your age? Or 10 years? Or…Because I’ve known just as many people younger than I am as I have around my age. Maybe that’s because I’m 36. I don’t think I’m remembering them all. This is all I can think of right now, of those pretty close in age:
2 car accidents (male) - I know there are more car accidents. I can’t think of them now. This is sort of a grisly exercise. I guess I will think of it as remembering the dead, because as you say, as awful as it is at the time, if they were not close friends or family members, it is easy to forget.
2 suicides
1 accidental suicide (gun)
1 shot by police in his own house when unarmed – I think they had called because there was an intruder - he had a pregnant wife
1 fell off a building in Mexico on high school graduation trip
2 - drowning - one was trying to save the other
1 - avalanche
As for younger than me, I’ve known 2 young children and a 20-ish woman who died of cancer, one boy who died when a tree fell on the car he was in, and a 20-year old who died in a streetfight. I also know there are more but I can’t think of them now. That in itself seems pretty sad, how can I forget?
I don’t have that many. Here are the ones I remember, within 5-7 years of my age:
A boy in my school who died of cancer, who would have graduated the same year as me if he had survived. He died during our junior year. I participated in a walkathon in his memory.
A girl who was in my twin sisters’ quinceanera had a baby. When she was 16 or so, the baby (then 18 months old or so) ran out onto the street, and she was run over by a car trying to rescue him. The baby survived, unhurt. The mother died instantly.
The brother of a boy who was also in the quinceanera committed suicide that year.
A high school classmate of my sisters was in a car accident that left her a quadriplegic. She died a few years later. The accident happened during their senior year. I think it was a few months later that an acquaintance of theirs was shot and killed a couple of blocks away from school as he was walking to class.
A guy in my brother’s fraternity hung himself one day a couple of years ago. His roommate found him.
Holy cow, Cisco, that’s a harsh list to have when you’re 27.
One guy died at the end of tenth grade (drowned in river rapids where he and buddies were drinking and he slipped in), and one kid died of cancer, but that’s about it for my youth, and people in my age group. Of course, I had lots of older relatives die.
– I think they had called because there was an intruder - he had a pregnant wife