Who we were.

      I come from a small town that revolved, for me as a kid at least, around the beach.  I was allowed to roam free, mostly, as a child, carefree on my pink and grey ten speed bicycle that I received on my 9th birthday.  Some things about that world, as I have learned in my adult life, were not as I remember them and the world was not as safe as I believed.  Perhaps my free roaming rights should have been a little more restricted, but if that were the case, I wouldn't have had those long sun-filled days burning the bottoms of my feet and picking sand spurs out of them at Englewood Beach, grabbing a hot dog and Coke lunch at Circle K; or spent my evenings at Pelican Pete's Playland earning enough tickets for a slap bracelet or some other useless plastic bit and running the go carts until I was out of the money my mom had handed me in the parking lot.

      Englewood is where I was a kid at Englewood Elementary watching the Challenger explode, where I was re-zoned into Vineland Elementary and became a Pop Warner cheerleader,  and where I suffered through middle school at L.A.Ainger where I was both bullied and the bully at one time or another and our class of hooligans was denied the benefits of the classes before and after.  Lemon Bay High School, by comparison to high schools in the city, was a tiny school where essentially everyone knew everyone, and you'd run into them eventually at the beach, because it was really the only place to go in town.

      For that reason, when we lose someone that ran the same roads in high school, that hit the beach on the same weekends, that you can trace all the way back to elementary school---it hits home in a different way than people you lose from your adult life alone.  It's happened again, and it's happened all too often.

      It's different because when I see his face, I see the 11 year old Darrell Baxter that used to run me into the wall on the slick track at Pelican Pete's, but still let me win in the end.  I see the Darrell Baxter with spiked hair giving me a Suicidal Tendencies CD for my 11th birthday, after which "All I wanted was a Pepsi" became a running joke. I see the Darrell Baxter spinning himself on a bar stool until he puked just to make my brother laugh.  I see the Darrell Baxter that made me watch bad horror movies, and then secretly held my hand when he thought no one was looking.  Even in High School, during Mr. Pearcy's History Class, I saw 11-year-old Darrell when we'd talk. He was definitely still in there.

     Who we were back then, in a small beach town with nothing to do, set us on our paths towards the places we'd go and the friends we'd keep.  It also means that when we lose one of the pack, looking back is inevitable and hurtful.  I'm looking back a lot today at the moments I had with my friend, with all my friends in the storied beach town of my childhood, sentimentalized as it may be in my head.  I'd rather look backwards with fond memories and forget the harsh realities that must have co-existed.  And I'd rather remember Darrell as that 11 year old boy, digging in the sand on Englewood Beach with 11 year old me, still mostly sure that things would turn out okay.

Skeptically Yours.


Our friend Darrell took his life on February 27th, 2013.