Dead

Dead

My father just notified me a kid I grew up with had been shot dead.

Apparently, there was some domestic dispute, and the 17 year old son of the women he’d been involved with shot him in the chest.

Apparently, it was deemed “defense”, so the juvenile shooter was not taken to trial.

I grew up in a town of 2,500. It was a small town, not like some violent inner city.

I remember this kid and his brothers ratting me out for drinking whiskey. He and his brothers were younger than us, so we shooed them away while we were trying to get drunk. I was maybe 14 years old at the time. They were clever enough to wait until we swigged, then ran to my father to tell him I was drinking. I remember my father being pissed, but, at least, he never beat me.

And I remember this kid and his brothers living in a trailer (mobile home) just like me. I remember we planned on scaring the shit out of him one night by waiting outside his bedroom widow. We were gonna yell and bang on his window to scare the shit out of him while he was going to sleep.

I remember waiting outside that trailer and hearing his mother call to him, “Go to the bathroom. Don’t go peeing the bed again.”

I remember hearing him say to his mother “pee pee”, so we didn’t follow through.

Now he’s dead.