Smart but Stupid

A little over a year ago now the first member of my high school class passed away. "Ted" was found hanging in his girlfriend's closet. Someone once described Ted to me as "Smart, but stupid," what I'd call a pretty accurate assessment. Academically he was almost brilliant, but his lifestyle decisions often hindered his great potential.

A perfect example of the clash between these two came Sophomore Year, when someone told me about how he had been getting baked in the bathroom his whole lunch period, before promptly going to Algebra II and earning 100% on that day's test. That's more of an example of Ted succeeding in spite of himself, and it speaks pretty highly of his intelligence.This was pretty demoralizing to me as I'd been studying my tail off that day during lunch and barely scrapped my way to a B minus.

We had been in the same math classes since seventh grade, when we both got placed in the one year advanced track. That was actually where I first met Ted; he, Alex E., Kristin B. and I all shared a table in Mr. Noll's Pre-Algebra class. We weren't exactly close friends, but the four of us got along quite well, joking and conversing during work time. Ted was clearly the smartest of the group though, continually helping and explaining concepts to the rest of us. You could tell he was cocky, a little too concerned with image, and definitely had the potential to be a jerk in social situations, but around us he was more just that sarcastic, yet cordial, slacker who felt like he was too smart to be there. I also still remember how in sixth grade, the year before, Owen explicitly complained to me how unjust his teacher was because she wouldn't let Ted join the advanced reading group due to his lackadaisical attitude. That's why all this is such a shame.

Ted really was far from the first person you'd expect it from, he was popular, he'd even been voted "Best School Spirit" by our class in our yearbook Senior Year. The last time I spoke with Ted was the beginning of my Freshman Year of college. I was attending a Twins game with two of my old high school friends, Jeff and James, and James, who was friends with Ted, led us outside to the designated smokers' area, where Ted and his now college roommate Justin B. had been chain-smoking for the past half hour or so. Jeff and I exchanged quick head nods and "what's up?"s with them before ceding the conversation to James. Afterward James told us that Justin was already getting fed up with Ted as a roommate because Ted would continually have girls over, and get very audibly explicit with them, while Justin was struggling to do his homework in the next room.

This past week a new report about Ted came out in our college's newspaper (what ultimately prompted this post). It tells how Ted was upset over his relationship with his girlfriend, and had written notes to himself in his phone reminding himself "don't be dumb anymore... she's looking for something else." Well I hate to say it but I don't think Ted did a very good job of following his own advice. Taking his own life was not the smart solution to anything. I know it's cliche, but he wasted so much potential, and if the outpour of affection on facebook is any indication, he was very well loved; he had an awful lot going for him.

The reason a new article about Ted was just published is because his family has decided to file a lawsuit, worth 50 grand, against the bar that illegally served him alcohol underage the night he died. Maybe it would make them feel a little bit better, but truly this action is just as fruitless as Ted's death in the first place. Will money bring him back? Ted had been drinking for years and the newspaper article states he drank 4-5 times a week. He'd already admitted to his girlfriend he'd attempted suicide while drunk several times previously so why didn't they seek to get him help before then? Yes alcohol probably played a role in his death, but even if this bar had refused him alcohol I find it improbable he wouldn't have found another way to get drunk that night. I can't say I really have any idea what they're going through, so this advice comes with a whole block of salt, but it's probably time to move on, this isn't the way to honor him.

The article also also prompted me into reflection again (and here comes my big tangent). During homeroom towards the end of Senior Year I looked around the auditorium, morbidly curious who would be the first of us to die. Well I have my answer, it's just too bad it had to come so tragically, and so soon. As I stated, our class was really pretty fortunate in terms of escaping tragedies. We didn't lose a single student from not only our class, but the whole high school, while we were there. Ed's passing was probably the closest yet a tragedy has come to my life. Over the years a series of deaths have occurred among people I know and I feel like they're slowly circling closer and closer to me. To this day I haven't had one really overtly emotional shock upon hearing of someone's demise. This worries me. When someone really close to me finally does pass away how will I cope with it? I'm concerned that one of these days I'm going to get absolutely blindsided by such news and I'll simply breakdown. Maybe I'll get lucky and avoid such a meltdown, but I find it unlikely. At the same time though, the longer I go without it not happening (for years I've been worried about this) the more concerned I get that maybe I'm just an unfeeling jerk, incapable of mourning.

And it's not as if I haven't had some pretty terrible deaths occur to acquaintances and relatives. When I was a baby my second cousin was accidentally shot at her daycare when the teenage son of the day care owner was cleaning his gun. When I was five I came home from kindergarten and my mom told me my 17 year old cousin had died, jumping off a freight train he had hopped with some friends, after missing the last passenger train of the night back to his Chicago suburb. At the time I knew who she was talking about, but it didn't really affect me. I fell asleep at the funeral and remember being inwardly upset with my mom and aunt for crying and making me feel uncomfortable (forgive me, I was five). Today I don't have any real memories left of him.

In fourth grade my grandpa died (of natural causes for once), I remember feeling slightly sad but I guess I didn't know him all that well. In fifth grade another one of my second cousins died, crushed by a horse that fell on her while doing demonstrations at an Equestrian camp. When I was in sixth grade one of the 8th graders shot himself. A few years later my mom's cousin died after the doctor accidentally cut off his oxygen flow while he was having back surgery of all things. I wasn't very close to any of them. In the beginning of ninth grade my middle school math teacher's son was found dead in a frozen river on the night of his 22nd birthday. Had I had Mr. Noll at the time I probably would have been pretty emotional, seeing the effects on him, but I was too far removed.

When Mr. Woessner died in a car accident in ninth grade, it was probably the next closest I've come to losing it. He had been my homeroom adviser my first semester of high school, so when I had him for Phy Ed the next semester he would often use me for an example when explaining drills and joke around with me. He was a really fun teacher, I still remember how he would roll around in his office chair on the basketball court, but sadly I only had him for two weeks. Going to class the week after he died was a very weird experience. That's when it hit you, he really was gone. The routine was over. His replacement, the man who'd hired him, Mr. Barnett, took us all into the Volleyball Center. Some people were already crying. He told us in more detail what had happened and gave us the chance to sign cards and write messages to Woessner's family.

In that class I hung out with Don and Andy Dick. Andy was outright sobbing, something I never expected. Don, on my other side, was just looking at the ground. I could feel the sobs trying to come out, but for some reason, because Don wasn't crying, I didn't want to either, and I stifled my bawls, managing to keep it down to a few rolling tears. Just wait til you get home, then you can have a good cry, I thought. When I got home though, I lied down and just waited for it to come, but the feeling had passed. Then I felt bad for not crying and tried to force it, but the tears still wouldn't come. So was it real emotion, or just getting caught up in the moment? I mean, I didn't cry the night before when seeing it on the news. Rather than go to his funeral a few days later, I opted to go over to Owen's when he invited me over.

The next year, Pat, who'd been a senior when I was a freshman, and the starting goalie on the soccer team until he got caught up in the hazing scandal and expelled, shot himself while talking to his girlfriend on the phone. Once again, if it had happened a year earlier, I think I would have been more upset, but at that point it just seemed unfortunate. Junior Year brought the big Kevin Langlie incident, which was weird because I saw it impacting so many of my friends, yet I had never known the boy. The summer after Senior Year my friend Aaron's dad died, I felt for Aaron, but had never met the guy. The next summer a guy who had been in my scout troop, the elder patrol leader who became my role model when I was a tenderfoot, died in a motorcycle accident. He was 23 and engaged. I hadn't seen him in five years.

Then a few months later, the news about Ted broke. I talked to my friend Jeff about it the next day. We both said it was weird because although we didn't know him well, we'd both found ourselves contemplating it for hours.

In the spring the 20-something TA of my one of my geography classes the previous semester unexpectedly died, though I could never find out why or how. This was especially distressing because I remember thinking while he was teaching lab one day "This is one guy who really has it together." The next summer the former Scout Master (adult leader) of my scout troop died of lung cancer. He was the scout master when I earned my eagle badge and helped me greatly along the way. I didn't even know he was sick. I came to know him and his wife and their 13 year old son, who looked up to me, quite well during Senior Year and once more, had it been a year or two earlier, I would have been thunderstruck (or so I'd like to believe). My heart goes out to them, just not my tear ducts (that empathy instead of sympathy thing).

Finally, this past fall, one of my grandmas passed away. I'd always assumed when one of them moved on I'd finally experience that tragic loss I've never felt. The way it happened though was so odd. My dad was with her out in New York, and every day he'd report back with different news. One day her health would be failing, the next, it looked like she'd make a full recovery, and so forth until the roller coaster finally bottomed out, but I never had that sheer plummet to the depths of loss. I had had weeks to prepare for such an outcome, so I slowly came to accept it, and it wasn't a painful sting. I was also unable to attend the funeral, which probably would have gotten to me.

To this day, the only person I can remember shedding tears over immediately upon hearing of their death was Timberwolves basketball player Malik Sealy, who was killed by a drunk driver the summer after sixth grade. Is that bad? He was my favorite player, one of my heroes, but still, should I be more broken up about his death than that of any of the aforementioned parties whom I actually knew? It doesn't seem like it.

I feel like I have very few genuine emotions when it comes to this. I'm an emotional guy, I really am, when alone I cry more often during songs, books, and movies than any acquaintance I'm aware of. I cry almost at will about fictional characters and situations, yet not about those real people in my life. It's like all my emotions are transitive. I see someone else who is sad on screen, and vicariously, I feel for them and make their pain my own. Maybe if I was there in the instant a person learned of the tragic death of a loved one, and saw their reaction, as I do in movies, it would apply to real life. Maybe the reason I haven't been punched in the gut by the death of anyone I've known is because, with the exception of Woessner, their deaths haven't been felt in my daily routine at the time, so I don't feel the change, their void, on a personal level. I don't really know what to say. I mean, no one really wants to feel pain, but maybe I feel like I'm missing out on some core human experience. If the time ever comes when I do feel such pain though, I know I'll wish it never occurred. I know if Ted saw all the pain he'd cause, he'd reconsider his decision.