Most of my friends from my high school years are dead.  I’m not making it up - I hung out with 2 different sets of friends - rough crowd.  The first set were friends I had in common with my middle brother.  I met all of them coming over to our house when they would skip school, getting stoned, drunk, taking whatever drugs they could get their hands on.  I was a 13 year old hanging out with people as old as 35. 

The second set were friends that were my own age, were not in common with my brother - another rough crowd.  Actually there was a 3rd set as well.  Those were the people I had come to know through talking on the CB radio.  I was a violent kid hanging around violent people and I didn’t care about life, whether I lived or died. 

In terms of death, I could list all of it, but it would take too much typing and time and really, isn’t worth going into.  But one murder/suicide is worth a mention. I had been picked up by friends to go to a party - as well as a carload of other people, one of which was a girl that lived a block away from me.  Skipping the partying/revelry/drunkennes, I was dropped off at my house. I was unbelievably high - I’ll never forget it because of what happened shortly after that.  I was looking at the stars in the sky, buzzing, it was 2:00am.  My parents had no control of me or my brothers.  They simply couldn’t deal with us.  Dad was off in his own world and mom had no chance. 

So, the car that dropped me off, dropped the girl off as well.  Well standing out there, staring at stars and - being on a different planet somewhere, I heard what I thought was an odd sound at the time of night: 2 very loud backfires from a car’s exhaust.  It didn’t connect in my thought processes at the time that that was not the sound of a car’s exhaust backfiring, but I couldn’t think what else it could be - I didn’t grow up around guns in my house - my parents were totally opposed to guns, gun ownership.  My mother has done a 180 degree about face on that issue, but that isn’t the subject here (though, I’m very glad for my mother’s reversal on her views on guns and the fact that she is a gun owner).

I saw the news the next day.  I had already known this girl had been stalked by a “man” who wanted her so badly, he couldn’t not continually call her and send her mail.  Let me address here that computers or the internet were a gleam in the world’s eye.  No email, no cell phones either.  He followed her, sat in his car outside of her house.  The situation had progressed to the point that law enforcement had been called numerous times and an Order of Protection had been issued, but that didn’t stop this guy.

The story -I heard it from this now-dead girl’s lips - is that she had continually told him he wanted nothing to do with her.  He continued to try and woo her.  She finally sent him a long letter detailing her need to be freed from his presence.  In this case, it was a “if I can’t have her, nobody can” - point blank range bullet to her head and then turned the gun on himself. I heard both shots but didn’t know what I was hearing until the next day when I saw all of this on the news.  It was eerie - I had heard the entire story from her - and heard her moment of what must have been a terrifying last momentsof her life.

Off the subject -well sort of - this is what I saw, over and over and over with my friends.  Murdered; killed in car and motorcycle accidents; falling off cliffs from hundreds of feet; shootings; knifings - I would never have gotten caught up in any of this - if my brothers hadn’t spend years persuading me to go from being a straight geek to a stoner/drug addict/violent person. 

I was shot at, threatened, threatened others, sent others to hospitals, destroyed property -long list.  Long ago and a different life that I have no desire whatsoever to partake in now.

Soooo, I was totally taken off-guard when a friend from that era contacted me via Facebook earlier this week.  It is a person I used to hang out with a lot.  I had so many friends that I can’t say I hung out with anyone all  the time excepting for a very few. 

Out of the blue, I have this message in my Facebook.  Hiya, how ya doing, this is Tom!  Tom?  He lived through all that s***.  He went off to the military - I tried to go with him but I was in trouble with the law and in the court system.  Army said no, come back when you’re done with court.  Tom went to the Army, I eventually waded through the trouble - but I never ended up going back to the recruiting office.  Instead, I went to a different type of military with it’s own boot camp - the mission field.  If you think that missionaries are wimps out there living off of donations and sitting around doing nothing, think again.  Yes, there ARE some like that, but the people I know are NOTHING like that.  It is a very rigid, disciplined and hard lifestyle.  I spent 5 years working 7 days a week with minimum 12 hour days and and more normal 14 to 18 hour days. 

For me, the possibility of hooking up with a person I knew as a good friend from those days - is not a light thing.  Most of my good friends are DEAD - fact.  The friends I made in church - left the church because of disagreements with the church or, shunned me because of a divorce that my ex-wife filed for.  Not worth going into - too long of a story.

I’m rather psyched.  It is something that I have longed for - just to reunite with people from my past.  I know of one other - a dude I also hung around with alot - but he lives in Colorado.  Anyway, we are going to meet up at a shooting range on Saturday, shoot some guns and reconnect. 

Back to the Superbowl…….