One guy at my high school died in a car accident. He was seventeen years old and quite literally the most popular outgoing person in the entire school. I still remember how we were all told at assembly what had happened. I was sixteen at the time and one of my friends had just started dating this guy. At first we thought it was a joke (though of course looking back, it's hardly what anyone would joke about) and as the news slowly sunk in, everyone was devastated.
That same year another guy at school committed suicide. He wasn't a good friend of mine but I did know him quite well and he was really close to a lot of my other friends - none of who had seen it coming. Again, even though this wasn't accidental, it was equally disturbing and twenty-four years later I still think about both of those guys and how their lives might've been. I also know that in some way they helped shape my life because it really was my first taste of that fact that none of us are invincible.
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Things like that really do stick out in your memory, don't they? I often wonder, too, when people die in high school what they might have been.
I know, it's so sad.
Yeah, I remember several people from my highschool who didn't survive... mostly due to car accidents:(
Teri
When I was a freshman there was a senior who died in a car accident. A few years later, his brother, (who was a few years behind him), died of cancer. And even though I didn't know them well, sometimes I still think of that family, and the younger sister those boys left behind . . .
Oh that is so sad, Amanda!
In my junior high, one of my friends was shot by his (policeman) dad. His dad also shot my friend's little sis and mom. I still get teary-eyed when I think of it.
Teri - yeah, kids in cars can be scary - they get called boy racers over here and it's really sad how many are killed!
Alyson - god, that is just so sad - that poor family.
Wendy - that is just so wrong and so traumatic. I never understand how people can do that to their own families.
Yikes. I guess we all have stories about these dark moments when we realize we won't live forever. I still remember the names of everyone from school who died young.
Melissa - I know, I can remember the names of these two guys better than I can remember nearly everyone else in the year.
You're so right. Those names are burned into your memory, even when others might fade away. There are three boys I will always remember from high school because each one of them was so full of life one moment and then gone the next. One took his own life, which still haunts me, to know he was so desperately sad and the rest of us had no clue. Another died of AIDS, which was an eye-opener in our small community. The last was one of the popular guys who went out on his family's boat with his buddies to celebrate graduation and never came back. When he fell overboard, he was too drunk to swim and his friends were too drunk to save him. Sad, needless death.
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