eppiemorrie

I had a friend in highschool whose house was the cool house.  Now, we were all nerds with Mensa applications in our Trapper Keepers, but still it was the cool house.  We went there after school for performance art band practice, and Aral's dad Michael would show us how to use the drum kit and play us records.  Once we tried to get a gig at the mall (we were, oddly, declined), so Michael drove around the mall parking lot all afternoon in his pickup truck blasting a tape of us.  His was the house we went to when our own wouldn't tolerate our queerness or just our unhappiness, and I know more than one of my friends had a haven there when things got bad enough at their own homes that they couldn't go home at all.

Michael died yesterday morning.  He was at home, and people who loved him were there.  

"I expect to pass through life but once.  If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again."  ~William Penn