let’s do something August 21.

that really perky girl from high school - the one that likes to gossip about everyone - just IMd me again on facebook. Save the date - August 21 - it’s our 20 year class reunion! wow...i say...20 years. Then she follows with - did you hear Mike (a former classmate of ours) passed away today? WHAT? seriously...save the date precedes this information. i’m not sure in the opposite order it would have been any better. but damn.

he had a party once. there was slow dancing in the basement. and some kind of cool lights outside. or i could have just been seeing cool lights, we drank a lot - small town, not a ton of entertainment options. he lost his temper that night about something, it was one of the very rare times I’d ever seen it. i don’t remember why though.

wow. dead. he was one of those super extremely kind kind people.

she said he still lives in washington. i couldn’t bring myself to ask if he had a family. i didn’t want to know. i wanted to pretend that he had this awesome blissful life since we last saw each other. apparently in the last 20 years he got MS or had MS when we knew him and we just didn’t know what it was. he was always very fragile and pale. when you’re growing up there are fragile and pale kids, they’re kind of labeled as odd, but not sick. not sick enough to kill you. we’re 30 freaking 7 years old. car accident - tragic, shocking even, but unexpected and very terrible things happen. dying of a sickness. unacceptable. now that’s unacceptable. i was told by someone at work today that it was unacceptable that i didn’t answer her email back right away. the best part of those psychotic encounters is the stories you get to tell about them. i’m sorry i can’t go to that meeting - i’m being unacceptable today. please don’t get too close - i’m unacceptable and Lord knows what i will do. Work is definitely acceptable - even if i’m dancing on your desk in my stilettos instead of answering your email. but dying...dying is completely unacceptable.

so what do you do? i feel compelled to go to his funeral or something. but it wouldn’t be to mourn the man that he became, but to mourn the child that he was when i knew him. (i think i was just channeling an episode of the Wonder Years) His dad was our mailman. 2 of my classmates had dads that were our mailmen...mailmans? the one recently popped up on facebook (on our official class reunion page - oh yeah - the page is awesome..(insert gagging sound), he’s married and a chef somewhere. his dad would drop off notes from him in my mailbox, which i’m sure is some sort of federal offense now. the best was a little cardboard box that contained a matchbox creme colored mercedes convertible. it was my dream car and he wanted me to have it. very sweet gesture for a 14 year old skater boy.

i guess i could send Mike’s family a card. if you’re a mailman and you live on your own route, can you just take your mail home with you at night or do you have to put it officially in the box? or does someone else drop off your mail if it’s not on your route or do you just pick it up at the office? Hmmm. i’m going to think on that one for a while. i know a girl who is a mailwoman (?) and I was telling her that my mailman was threatening not to give us our mail until we wrote our names on our mailboxes. it was like an ultimatum.....he wrote it on my mail in scratchy obviously pissed off penmanship. he posted a tiny tiny note by our mailboxes that was sooo little you almost wonder if he didn’t want us to see it so he could be like fuck it, that’s like a dozen less addresses each day. but she said she’s been bitten and chased by dogs and all kinds of crazy things - you have to do whatever you can do to deliver the mail. she said my mailman could be fired. scandal. i just want my mail, not a crazy federal employee gunning for me. so one by one we all have labeled mail boxes. and my exciting bills and american cleaner’s coupons arrive without incident.

so in conclusion to the rambling, i could start into the litany of why do bad things happen to good people. or declare that i’m going to run a marathon or proclaim a new zest for life. but instead i’m going with “what the fuck”?