It’s weird what you think about sometimes.

The other day I was thinking about a kid I went to Jr. High with. His name was Howard. Classmates will know who I’m speaking about but please keep his name private out of respect. Howard was probably the poorest kid in school. Barely spoke. Kept to himself. A shy wallflower. Never did anything to anybody….was just “there”. Weird.

Looking back at it now…..we were all so cruel. Not in the sense that we “bullied” him….it was worse. Much worse. We ignored him. Avoided him. Always the last kid picked. Ate his lunch alone. I don’t think I ever said a word to him.

The last day of junior high I brought my camcorder to school. Yup. I was the A/V nerd before that was even a “thing”.

We had an especially tight class. We were all very close friends. On the video tape you can hear somebody say “Hey, you got to go film Howard!! Tee hee”. Sarcastic laughing.
“Yeah, no….we don’t gotta film Howard!” shamefully was my reply. Forever in film. What an asshole.

I was curious to see whatever happened to Howard. I don’t know what happened after junior high school because I don’t believe he went to my high school. If he did he just blended into obscurity.
After doing a little digging I discovered that Howard seemed to have made a better life for himself in Florida – as a roofer. I have to imagine his childhood must have been extremely rough. It’s obvious to me now there must have been abuse based on the way he acted. I don’t really think he had very many friends – certainly not the amount of friends the rest of us did.

Posts from late 2018 show a teenage daughter and a fiance. He was getting married! He did find love – finally! Shit. I’ve been single (mostly😉) for a decade! Looks like I could learn something from Howard.

He looked “worn” and not his age but he looked like he made it! I was happy to see he was a stronger person and got through a troubled life made no better by us kids.
Then after looking at the last post of early January 2019….my heart skipped a beat when I noticed “Remembering” next to his name. He passed away. I don’t know how, when, or why. It just hit me like a ton of bricks that this poor kid finally found some happiness and he dies. Seriously?

I’m going to share this story with my son.

I certainly wished I could have seen things differently and maybe simply sat at the lunch table and said “Hello”. Life is short folks. We gotta be good to each other. Sometimes a simple “Hello” is all it takes to build hope. Sometimes all you need is a little hope.