<p>Sometimes we lose ourselves in the difficult world we live in. We forget we're alive, and we forget how to be thanful. We worry about trivial things, and we don't appreciate life. To all of you who are worried about college, please take the time to realize what is truly important-your friends, your family, and what you chose to do with your life. Nick Jennings, a sophomore in my school, died in a car crash two days ago. Please take the time to read my friend's editorial.</p>
<p>This is the hardest thing Ive ever had to write.
Ive started and stopped this editorial more times than I care to count. With bold keystrokes, I have condemned pages of prose to mechanical oblivion.
For once in my life, Im at a loss for words.
How do you write about the unthinkable? How do you seek to answer the unanswerable? How do you address the unspeakable abomination that is an untimely death, in which the only real culprit is malicious Fate?
Truth is, I could write this editorial about a thousand things. I could write about Nicks penchant for baggy clothes and obscene belt buckles. I could write about the sardonic, wiseass humor he brought to every classroom.
I could write about crying in the gym the day he died, and about how it was the first time Id cried since I was cut from baseball as a sophomore. I could write about calling my little brother on the phone to tell him.
I could write about laying a wreath and cross at the scene of the crash the day he died, and seeing the Guitar Night poster that some caring soul had framed and left there.
I could write about how at the memorial on Sunday, I saw people crying, people who Id never before seennor ever expected to seeexpress anything remotely akin to compassion, or sadness, or any human emotion. I saw people crying, people who had never met him, who were weeping because now theyd never get the chance.
But how can any of these things do justice to the loss of Nicks life? To attempt to write about it is absurd, for no words can capture the horror of a sixteen year old boy with a shattered back and a broken heart lying on the side of the road like a used up rag doll. The most beautiful sermon possible, eve n if delivered by Christ Himself, could not explain away why this boyGod, a mere child!---was apologizing to his friends and family as his life bled away in a Boston hospital.
Can you see him now? Can you see him lying motionless on Proctor Hill as the paramedics arrive, and the first words they hear from his mouth are: Charley, are you ok? Charley, are you ok? Oh god
I cant feel my body
Very few people in this world deserve such a death. Nick Jennings was not one of them. </p>
<p>I met Nick in our firstand onlyyear of high school football. I disliked him instantly. He was a punk, a snotty freshman jackass who ran with a wild upperclassmen crowd. If you werent in his little clique, he looked at you with nothing but disdain, irrespective of how you might treat him. I grew to hate him intensely.
When I walked into 3rd Period Improv this year to find him on the roll there, I was ready for another year of mutual dislike.
But something had changed in Nick. I dont know what it was, or when it happened, or who caused it. Neither do I especially care to know. All I know is that something had changed. Nick had morphed into a disgustingly respectable young mana transformation that put all of my carefully laid plans to hate him in check.
While still an artist of the vaunted Jennings wit, he managed to joke, now, without seeming like a complete jackass. His jokes ceased to be at the expense of othershe joked with people.
The fondest memory I will ever have of Nick is from that class. Nick and Justin Conroy, who, in that class, were like brothers, were partnered up for a mime, in which they played firefighters. When Ms. T told them to play off of the manly bonding theme, they executed, without hesitation, the most beautiful and appropriate best friend handshake Ive ever seen in my life. There was something about that momentsomething with the light, and the way it shone down off Justins hair and Nicks infectious smile; something about the speed and accuracy in which they conducted the ritualthat imprinted it indelibly in my memory, and I hope I always carry it with me.
Its no secret, to anyone who knew him, that Nick was far from angelic. He was a daredevil with everything he did, and his feats of derring-do didnt end at how fast he could drive or how outrageous his classroom antics could be. He drank and smoked and partied wildly throughout much of freshman year. But when the change came, as far a I know, he curtailed his vices. Neither drink nor drugs were factors in his crash. And the fact that Nick was, as they say, on the mendor, if you prefer, getting his life back on track, if it was ever off itmakes his death, for me, that much more unbearable.
It was once said that, Those who do not fear death have only experienced it from the chin up. If thats true, anyone who knew him would tell you that Nick had been brain dead for years before his body followed suit. His motto was Live fast, ride hard,, and he was as solemnly observant of that maxim as any monk is of his vows. He was true to the point of death: riding, stupidly, in a speeding Ford Explorer without his seatbelt on. </p>
<p>And there are so many more things I want to mention, and to say so much more clearly.</p>