Had a weird dream the other night. I dreamed my father made a confession to me: he actually had another son, besides me, and his name was H.D. Wilbanks, who I went to school with. In the dream I was stunned, realizing my father had another lifeThe I didn't know about.
Meanwhile, in other nightmares from my past, there was one guy we didn't talk about at the memorial service for Charlie Waters, and he haunted everyone I know:
Student Body President Rick Ridenour and our English teacher Mrs. Logsdon
We loved the guy. He was smart and handsome and the president of our high school. Everyone assumed he would be a U.S. senator, maybe even a president. Didn't turn out that way. He is the tragedy of our town.
MCUHS officers, 1965: Rick, Jan, Jim and Marsha
Charlie and I had many talks about the why of it. The lonely suicide, the weirdness of the downward spiral. Wayne Rutschman and I also talked about Rick on the way back from the memorial for Charlie, like a tragedy, within a tragedy, too painful to explain. We could only tell our narrow versions of the events as we saw them. A train wreck witnessed from afar.
"The loneliness social media aspires to repair is the loneliness of empty streets, Dairy Queens, the loneliness of high school, the loneliness of Mexican gardeners, the loneliness of lawns."
—Richard Rodriguez
