I had a friend as a kid, Brooks, who died of cystic fibrosis in elementary school.
Well, I just spent about an hour reading and silently crying. Life is tragic and cruel. There is so much emotional and physical pain that can happen in the blink of an eye; it’s important to remember to always work to try to bring joy and comfort into the world.
Mike was a kid who hung out with younger kids than him. He was 15, most of his friends were 12-13. One day we learned that Mike had died-he had been found hanging from a pipe in the basement of his parent’s house. His pants were down, and he showed evidence of being a fan of autoerotic asphyxiation.
When I was too young to understand, my cousin Ronnie was killed by his friend. They were both high and had just had an argument. As Ronnie walked away, his friend shot him in the back of the head. I don’t really have any memories of him. But his death cast a long shadow over the years, influencing family behavior ever since.
What a horribly strange story. Were those guys high or something?
Sadly, I have quite a few. I grew up in a small farming community in Missouri, and we had our share.
The first one I remember was when i was in the 5th grade. I was friends with another kid, and one night my friends older brother was showing him how to clean a gun. And it went off and killed the older brother.
When I was 15, a classmate of mine (also 15) was driving with a bunch of friends on a country road. He lost control and the truck rolled down an embankment, rolling on top of my classmate and crushing him.
One of the guys that was with my friend was deeply devastated, naturally. Then, on graduation night, several years later, he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
My junior year in high school, my sisters prom date (she was a year ahead of me) was murdered. He was in San Diego and witnessed a liquor store robbery…and he tried to be a hero. He was stabbed and died very quickly.
Oh, one more. A kid that lived up the street was at his fathers farm, playing in an empty grain silo. His dad didn’t realize he was in there and turned on the auger (not sure if I spelled that right) and filled up the silo, suffocating/crushing the poor guy.
There was a girl in my ninth grade class. Her mom worked with mine. This girl went on her first “car date” with two other couples. Six kids in the car. The car was involved in a head on collision. Killed the girl I knew and several others were badly injured. The kid driving survived. The guilt screwed him up bad. He got into drugs and eventually went to prison.
Funny, how even 30 years later I think of her. Wonder what she’d be like today. What profession she’d be working in.
I wonder that too, aceplace, especially about my friend Nancy. She was very smart.
Another that I thought of, although I didn’t personally know the kid who was killed, is a former SO’s brother.
Three brothers, ages 5 (my former SO), 10, and 14 were at home one summer day while the folks were at work. The two older boys got into a fight and the 10 year old barricaded himself in the outhouse. The oldest brother thought he’d threaten the barricaded boy with a twelve gage shotgun (nothing like hearing the cock of a shotgun to put fear into a person). While doing so, the gun went off, a slug went through the door of the outhouse and into his brother.
The shooting was ruled as accidental and the oldest brother went on to become a productive member of society. However, it did contribute to the breakup of the parents’ marriage.
? Maybe some shot went through the door?
missred, what year was that?
Yeah he and I were in the same graduating class 
I also bagged groceries with his younger brother in high school. Much smarter than Dan.
Shotguns can fire slugs - extremely powerful
Steve and Jeff were friends from synogogue youth group. They stopped in to visit on the way from Philly to the Catskills where they were both to work as busboys in an old style Borscht Belt hotel. They visited camp in the Poconos all day, swam, had dinner and asked to sleep there in a spare room in the building used for visitors. They were tired, it was a hell of a long drive up to Sullivan County NY. The owner of the camp- an obnoxious Israeli bastard, ex-Mosaad, etc- refused. Told them that since they had not pre-arranged it, they had to leave. Steve fell asleep at the wheel less than 20 miles out from the camp. The car flew off the road and down an embankment. Jeff was nearly decapitated. Steve awoke from the impact to find his dead bloodied friend next to him. He dragged his body out and partially up the hill. Then the car exploded. Drivers saw the fire and stopped. Steve was never the same.
Janice was my girlfriend’s best friend. Lifelong best friends. The third of three kids of two highly successful surgeons. Both older siblings were Dr’s or in Med School and well on their way. The pressure was enormous. The same summer that Steve and Jeff stopped by camp, Janice was working at camp with me. A month or two later, she had started at Univ. of Penna. She took the train home to the Main Line, took her father’s pistol and blew her brains out in the back yard. There were perhaps 30 or 40 family and friends of family at the funeral. There were over 100 kids who knew her from the state-wide youth group movement. Her parents were completely overwhelmed by the size of the group of contemporaries. They were also in complete denial over their part in her death.
Kerri was 13 when I met her. I was a year older. Volunteered once a week for 5 hours in a hospital pediatrics ward. First it was Anemia. She went home. A few months later she was back with Leukemia and never went home again. This was the mid-1970’s. There was no Hospice. She stayed in that room till she died and every week I’d go in and sit down and visit for a while with her.
Then one week her room was empty and cleaned out.
I know the person who was the music teacher to all three dead kids in this accident resulting in jail time for the driver. Nightmare…
Cartooniverse
Brian was a guy in third grade. Not a best friend, but a recess guy who hung out with the group. Then one day He didn’t come to school. We didn’t hear much just that he would be gone for a while. The around the end of the year we were told his Mom had problems, and he had been taken away from her and would never come back. It was sad, but we got over it and forgot about him by the next year.
When I was in in high school, someone brought up his name. Wondered where he was. Some one told us that he had actually been shot one night by his mother and had died. I looked through the newspaper archives, and found out it was true. It was very sad that none of us who were his 3rd grade friends, many of whom were still around in high school, had ever know the truth until then.
"Chillin out, maxin, relaxing all cool,
And shooting some b-ball outside of school
When a couple of guys who were up to no good
Started making trouble in my neighborhood
I got in one lil fight and my mom got scared
And said “You’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
My Junior High school tormentor, Mike, who was classically good looking, athletic, and loved (or at least feared) by all. This guy seemed to have the perfect life, but something in the back of my mind made me wonder why, then, did he need to be such a bully? Our class separated after high school and I didn’t give him another thought until one day senior year when a neighbor stopped by and informed me that Mike has killed himself by walking onto the I-5 at night when most of the trucks are on the road and visibility is low. She also revealed that his father, despite being a highly successful businessman, was a nasty brute, physically torturing his mother and sexually abusing his sister. My junior high suspicions were correct after all. 
It would have been around 1963.
You know that kid that just seemed to be cool with everybody? The one that could just say anything and not get roasted by the Populars? Had lots of friends and never let anything bug him?
He went to my high school. Sophomore year, he hung himself. They had an assembly for him and they played ‘Gangsta Lean’ for him, because it was his favorite song. Just about everyone cried. We were lucky–this wasn’t the kind of school where kids died like that, and living in Chicago I knew plenty of people who went to those schools. No one knew why. For the next week it was like we were all looking at each other, wondering.
S had been a fairly quiet guy in my chem and physics classing in high school. A few years later while reading the Sunday paper one morning at work (Sunday mornings were rather slow), I read that he had fallen about 100 feet off a cliff a few miles outside town.
Barb was a friend of my older sister, and was very well liked. She died at 14 of an acute asthma attack when I was 12. Her parents tried to drive her to the hospital, but it was snowing pretty bad and they didn’t make it.
I went to HS with a lot of Navy brats, and they moved so often I really didn’t get to know a lot of them, so I don’t remember this kid’s name. He anchored a rope to something in his bedroom and hung himself outside a second story window. He did it at night while his parents were out, and purposely did it so that when his parents pulled into the driveway, he was right there above the garage dangling from the window.
Chris was one of my stoner buddies from HS, a really cool guy to hang out with. He disappeared after graduation, and a few years later word got around that he killed himself playing Russian Roulette. Then ten or twelve years after that we heard that his wife confessed to murdering him.