A few days ago, I learned via facebook that a very close friend of one of my best friends had died at the age of 46. I didn't know the fellow ( his name was Mark ) at all ( I met him during the weekend of my friend's wedding 21 years ago, but we never crossed paths after that. ), but whenever you hear news like that you can't help but think a little bit about your own mortality and the mortality of the people you love ( BTW, my friend's wife wrote a very touching tribute to Mark. I'll link to that tribute here if my friend's wife indicates that this is OK to do. Otherwise I'll respect the privacy of those who are grieving and won't link to the tribute. Just know that I was very touched by the tribute, and it indirectly led to the post I'm writing now. ). As I was looking through the comments on my friend's facebook post about Mark, I learned that one of my other high school ( and facebook ) friends had gotten news that somebody she had been close to in our high school had just died. The comments didn't mention who had died ( The first two comments I read didn't, but comments that I read a few hours later did ), but based on the comments, I had a pretty good guess ( and ultimately correct guess ) about who the person was. However, I thought it would be kinda rude of me ask my grieving friend about the identity of the deceased just to satisfy my curiosity, so I decided to satisfy my curiosity myself by checking the obituaries on my high school's alumni website.
However, when I checked the obituary section, I didn't find the name I expected to find. Instead, I found a name that got me thinking about a couple of things.
I found that somebody from my own graduating class had died a few month earlier. I'm not going to name this person in the post, but if you know my age and my high school ( which I don't make a secret of on the Internet ) you shouldn't have a hard time finding the name. For rest of this post I'll refer to this person as ECG ( English Class Girl - I think she was in a few of my classes, but I mostly remember her from an English class. ).
I almost hesitate to go further in this post, because what I'm about to write will seem so trivial and insignificant compared to real grieving some of my friends are going through right now. I didn't really know ECG at all, so I'm certainly not experiencing any sad feelings about her death, other than the generic sadness one might feel upon hearing about anyone dying young.
I'm also a bit wary about seeming too self-centered. After after, two of my friends have lost people they cared about, ECG has died tragically ( Her cause of death was never made public, but apparently she had been battling depression for a while, and there is a lot of speculation that she committed suicide ), and I'm about to go off and write about ME.
But hey, when I heard about ECG's death, it certainly made me think about a few things, perhaps things that were mostly about ME, but I can't deny I thought about these things. If I'm a self-centered person because another person's tragic death made me think about ME, hiding the fact that I thought this way doesn't really make me any less self-centered. I like to be an open book in this blog, and I like to share stuff, and the news of ECG's death made me think of a story I've never told anyone before.
There's nothing particularly scandalous or embarrassing about this story, but it's also not particularly exciting, and it never really felt like the right time to tell this story. However, the story is related to ECG, and the news of ECG's death made me think of this story for the first time in many years.
So, if there's ever going to be a right time to tell this story, I guess it's now.
Our story begins during my sophomore year of high school ( I believe it was the second semester ) - or at least I think it was my sophomore year. I think it happened in whatever semester we studied Greek myths in English class ( Stuy folks, help me out here - that was sophomore year - right? ). In any case, I'm sure it either happened during my sophomore year or the first 5 months of junior year, because that was the time I was obsessed with the girl I've always referred to as HSG1 ( High School Girl #1 ) on this blog.
For those who are not familiar with the HSG1 story, HSG1 was the first girl I fell in "real love" with. It's not that I had not pined for other girls in the past - I'd had a crush on the same girl from 4th grade through 8th grade. However, I was attracted to the 4th-to-8th-grade-girl because I thought she was really pretty, and she "developed" a lot earlier than most of the other girls in her peer group. I recognized that the attraction was purely hormonal, as was the attraction I had for another really pretty girl during my first year of high school. With HSG1, the feelings were different. She was undoubtedly pretty, but I had convinced myself that my feeling for her went far beyond mere physical attraction. After all ( I told myself ), I had seen her every morning in my homeroom class during freshmen year, and I had never developed a crush on her ( because I had been focused on a really pretty girl I'd had a few classes with, plus a girl who had sat to the front-right of me in homeroom ( who had legs that I would sometimes think about during my "private time"). ). I didn't start to think of HSG1 in a romantic way until she started to talk to me occasionally at the start of sophomore year ( She had no choice - we were assigned to be lab partners in our Chemistry class. ). So, because I didn't fall for her until I started to get to know her a little ( I should emphasize "little" - I really barely knew her ), I had convinced myself that my feelings for her constituted pure "true love". Heck, I had her up on such a pedestal that I didn't even think of her during my "private time". Whether these feeling were justified or rational really isn't the point. The point is that the feelings were real to me, and they consumed me for 17 months of my teenage years.
I took the time to explain my feeling for HSG1, because only my level of obsession with HSG1 can begin to explain my actions ( or more accurately, lack of action ) in the ECG story.
This story takes place in an English class I had with ECG. Our English teacher had assigned a rather unusual project. She asked all of us to create a personal adds for ourselves. We had to hand in a sheet of loose-leaf paper with a photo of ourselves attached to it, along with a paragraph or two describing ourselves. After collecting all these personal adds from each of her multiple English classes, our English teacher distributed the adds across all her classes, and asked the students to write comments ( anonymously or non-anonymously ) on the personal adds they thought were interesting.
Frankly, I don't know what our English teacher was thinking. Maybe she was testing out an idea that eventually made her millions running a Match.com type site, but I can't imagine running a dating service for teens was part the English department's core curriculum.
In any case, after the personal adds were distributed and commented upon, they were handed back to the people who created them. When I got mine back, I found 2 comments. One comment had really nice flattering things to say about me ( This comment was from a girl in another class who I had never met before. I never bothered to look her up ( for reasons that will be apparent soon ), and I frankly forget what her name was. ) The second comment, written directly under the first said ...
"You've got good taste!"
This comment was written anonymously, but a few minutes later, I found out who wrote it.
Our English class had a teacher's assistant ( TA ) assigned to it. I believe the TA was either a college student or grad student who was training to become a teacher. A few minutes after we got our personal adds back, the TA comes to my desk, points to the "You've good good taste!" comment and whispers in my ear that ECG wrote the comment.
Once again, I don't know what the heck was going on in this English class. Was the TA trying to play cupid? Did the English teacher promise the TA college credit for each hook-up she could facilitate in the class? Like I said before, this was an unusual project.
In any case, I now had some information that could potentially change the course of my high school life. The info was certainly no guarantee that ECG would be willing to go out with me ( She was rather pretty and quite social, so I would have been kinda surprised to find out that she didn't already have a boyfriend at the time. In fact, if she did already have a boyfriend, that would certainly explain why she had decided to make her comment anonymously. ). Still, if I had made some effort to get to know her better, there was certainly some potential there.
So, did I do anything with this new information?
Of course not. My heart belonged to my "true love" HSG1.
Never mind that I wasn't dating her. Never mind that she never showed any romantic interest in me. Never mind that I barely spoke to her. Never mind that she probably already had a boyfriend.
Never mind all that. I was going to remain "faithful" to HSG1 until that one magical day in the future when fate would finally bring us together.
So, I never did anything with the information about ECG. The story really ends on that day in our English class.
But what if it hadn't?
I'm certainly happy about the way my life turned out. I have a wonderful wife and children, and I wouldn't change anything about that. However, I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't a least a little bit curious about how my time in high school could have been different if I had made some different choices.
That's why it felt a little bit - I don't know - odd to find out that ECG had died. I not sure what the right word to describe it is, but I think I may have been lying when I wrote that I just felt a generic sadness when I found out that she had died. Well, maybe the sadness was generic, but I felt something more than just sadness. I don't know what it was - poignancy perhaps?
I just couldn't shake the feeling that ECG was somebody that I should have known. I'm not necessarily saying that I should have ( or could have ) dated her, but I should have gotten to know her - it certainly seemed like a door was opened a bit on that day in English class, but I choose not to walk through it.
As curious as I am about how my high school years could have been different if I had known her, I'm also curious about how her life could have been different if she had known me. Now, it would be extremely delusional and arrogant of me to even suggest that ECG might still be alive today if she had been a friend of mine. I really don't know how she died or why she died, or what drove her over the edge if she really did die of depression-induced suicide. However, I feel I owe a small debt to her that I never properly repaid.
In case it wasn't already extremely obvious, I had very low self-esteem back in high school. I was extremely shy and awkward, and most of the time I hated myself because of it. I didn't have the courage to talk to any girls, girls didn't talk to me, and part of me couldn't imagine why any girl would ever want to go out with me. ECG's comment on my personal add changed that a little bit ( and to a lesser extent the other girl's comment on the personal add ( However, I think ECG's comment seemed more real to me because I found out about it when she was sitting just 15 feet across the classroom from me. )). She made me feel a little bit more self-confident. It may have been a small thing, but every little bit helps. If you are 100% sure that any girl you would ask out would reject you, why would you even try? Why would you torture yourself like that? The road from "shy guy who's afraid to speak to girls" to "married guy" is a long and hard one, and a shy guy needs to slowly build his confidence to move down that road. ECG's comment helped me move down that road a little bit. She made me feel better about myself, and when I found out that she had probably committed suicide, I felt some regret that I never got the chance to make her feel better about herself.
So, I guess that closes the book on my ECG story, and to a larger extent, closes the book on the time I'll spend thinking about her. Sure, I might review this blog post years from now when I'm traveling down memory lane, but after a week or so has passed, it's unlikely that I'll be thinking about ECG again for many years. So while she's still on my mind, I'll just say this ...
Thanks ECG. Wherever you are, I hope you've found peace.
Rich
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