Two months ago, a barrage of messages began circulating on facebook. My Elementary school class started communicating with each other. Talking about our past, specifically 5th- 8th grade, which, turns out was an incredibly vivid time in most of our lives.
As e-mails began to circulate and tidbits of each others lives began to leak out, I learned that someone I was really good friends with way back then, killed himself in early adulthood.
Death can cause such a strange human emotion, but when it was the death by suicide of friend than you haven’t spoken to in 22 years, it gets even more complex. I couldn’t help but feel so sad for everything he missed out on. College. A first apartment. A salary. Marriage. Kids. Everything I take for granted each day as regular life, he missed. But want haunts me the most is that; I’ve met so many people, with pain and flaws. I’ve met people that were mean, people that took life for granted. And he wasn’t one of them. My friend Kenny was kind. He was a friend to me when I was a loner. He was vulnerable and real. He was better at basketball than I was but he didn’t rub it in my face. He had a cockatoo that he loved, two siblings that he watched over. He taught me how to make Top Ramen and showed me how good it is with lots of pepper. It makes me sad to think of how many people didn’t get to know him, to learn from him, to have him a friend.
When I was in high school I had friends but, I surely wasn’t the “popular” kid. I was awkward. Hated to be called out in class. My stomach would do back flips everyday during “roll call” because I was afraid my name would be pronounced wrong and people would laugh.
During these awkward years, I met a kid named Tracy. He was tall and lanky. A great basketball player with a cute girlfriend. He was popular. But he didn’t know it. I sat next to him in math class and would crack jokes that made him laugh. He’d wave at me in the hallway, even if he was walking with the gang of popular jocks that pretended I didn’t exist.
One day after class, our senior year, there was a “boxing fight club” event at a local park. 50+ unsupervised high schoolers met at a local park to box. I, of course, went to watch but somehow ended up in the ring… with Tracy. This is where I learned what it felt like to be punched in the nose. I also learned that I suck at boxing but, that I can withstand a series of punches. Tracy floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, I on the other hand was the perfect punching bag. I was the guy that couldn’t hit but refused to hit the mat, either. So there I stood blow after blow, getting pummeled.
30 seconds into Round Three, my arms dropped and through my watery blurry vision I watched Tracy approach. His right hand twirling in the air like Muhammed Ali’s famous Rope-a-dope. I stood defenseless. The crowd of high school kids chanted Tracy’s name and awaited a final blow that surely send me flying across Ashford Park. But instead of taking me out that day, he stopped, grabbed my shoulders, looked at me in my watering eyes and said, “You okay, man? Good match.”
Whoah. What high school kid does that? The entire school was chanting his name and he chose not to lay me out. If I were him I would have done it. But he didn’t. He was good person.
Two years later he killed himself.
Two beautiful people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing took their own lives.
How does this happen? We need them. We, all of us, this world, need Kenny’s and Tracy’s in it. They were great people. They would make great fathers and husbands and co-workers and best friends. They were real and sensitive. They were human and vulnerable.
Why did they leave us?
I hate to think that in our own insecurities, society has gotten so good being fake that their realness made them misfits. You can be great at boxing, or basketball or math but, if your sensitive, vulnerable and honest… if you’re too real, you’re a weak link.
This isn’t the case, right? I’m being melodramatic. We’re all real and honest and human and vulnerable, right? We don’t promote fakeness and reward the boxers that floor the wavering component, right?
I miss Kenny. I miss Tracy. But, what saddens me even more is that the world we’re in now, needs them. The world without them is losing its perspective. In 2009, we reward the villains and reject the hero’s.
We need to figure this out. It's not too late. Kenny’s and Tracy’s still exist out there. They are outside of the limelight. They’re honest. They have integrity. They come from all walks of life, some are successful, some aren’t. But they aren’t afraid to go unnoticed in exchange for doing what’s right. They aren’t stepping on people. They aren’t lying to get ahead. They’re just nice, simple honest people that want to do what’s right.
My advice. Make friends with them. These are the best people in the world. They’re the great fathers and mothers, incredible bosses and mentors, best friends and spouses.
Learn from them. Support them. They are hero’s, but the most beautiful thing about them is... they don’t even know it.
