I worked with Carmen Erin Arizzi for a number of years at Papa John's, starting waaaay back in May '00. He was a tall goofy dude who went to school one semester a year and worked his butt off the rest of the year to pay for it. He was lead singer of the indy band Ruby Minor, and liked to toke a little weed. His roommate was an English teacher at the high school I graduated from, and actually taught my sister her senior year. He was three or four years older than me, but had figured out how to stay "young at heart." He's the guy who told me I should watch "Best in Show" and called "Royal Tennenbaums" the best film he'd ever seen.
I don't know that I would say we were friends, but we were friendly, even though now we were both working for competing delivery shops. I would always seem on the road, in his black Nissan Maxima with a Maryland State Flag sticker on the bumper. We'd honk to say 'hi.' He always had a big grin on his face, even when someone said, "Erin, why do you have two girls' names?"
After September 11th he talked about getting a gun. He predicted a future where he'd be forced to bike around Cockeysville using his firearm to survive against the evil hordes after a nuclear holocaust. Personally, I thought he'd read Stephen King's "The Stand" a few times too much.
His funeral was Tuesday. He died sometime last week, complications from diabetes? A couple ex-co-workers tried to get in touch with me, but the only one who had my current phone number couldn't reach me because her cell broke (and that is, of course, where she had my phone number stored). The moral of this story: always make sure to make a hardcopy of the people you might want to get in touch with.
There are 100,000 dead in Asia and Africa. There are American soldiers and Iraqi citizens being killed everyday over in Iraq. And yet all of that seems insignificant compared to the death of this one individual, a person I didn't know all that well. I can't even imagine what someone over there, who lost their entire family, is feeling.
Man, this fucking sucks. Happy New Year.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"The moral of this story: always make sure to make a hardcopy of the people you might want to get in touch with."
Insert cloning joke.
So, why did he have girls' names?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Women are more imporntant to most men than other men are.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Jeff, those are the faceless/nameless masses, this guy you knew.... Always a bit more of a jolt when you know the person.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Sometimes. I was once friends with a guy (Kevin Elliott) in a Very Bad Place. We soon became distant and later hostile to each other. He was beheaded in a car crash.
I can recall how strange it was not to feel anything about his passing.
Yet, I often feel bad- even outrage- at the deaths of complete strangers I hear of on the news.
Grief is strange like that: no reason to beat yourself up over it.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Unless you enjoy it, in which case, feel free to....