Day 169

Dawn and I just watched episode 1, season 4 of Stranger Things (ST). ST was one of Damian's favorite shows. At least the first season or two. I'm not sure how much he was still into it as his taste in television and movies was definitely maturing. He really liked Game of Thrones, save for the last season, and Breaking Bad. I think he was also watching Better Call Saul and Ozark. While those shows may have eclipsed ST in terms of how much he liked them, I'm sure that he would have watched this season, too. 

The first episode is intense, especially the opening and closing scenes. But what caught my attention and got me to thinking about life outside of Hawkins, Indiana was the timeframe of the show. This episode finds the heroes of Hawkins in the spring semester of their freshman year of high school. The year is 1986. The year that I graduated from high school. Dawn, too. 

I don't remember much from high school – my memory just isn't that good – but I do remember graduation. Or more accurately, I kind of remember the morning after graduation. I received a phone call that morning that I did not expect or want. Watching ST tonight, trying to remember my senior year, I reconnected with this event from my distant past.

The middle of my sophomore year (January 1984), I transferred from a public, coed high school in an agri-centric one-traffic light town a few miles west of Omaha that I despised, to an all-boys Jesuit high school in downtown Omaha. Full disclosure: I'm not Christian let alone Catholic, but the school, Creighton Prep (CP), had a policy of letting in students who weren't "of the faith". Several of my classmates were Black, practicing Baptists, and also very gifted athletes. While I was none of those things, I wasn't stupid either so they took pity on me and let me in. I'm glad they did. Turned out to be one of the best decision my parents – or was it just my mom? – ever made regarding my education. Unlike the asylum I had just left, this was a place where being smart, well spoken and reading for fun were not seen as weakness, things to be mocked, or the all-to-obvious hallmarks of being queer. There was no worse aspersion than to be branded a queer, fag or homo in Idiotville. No longer being bullied on a regular basis or feeling ostracized for being "different" (read: interested in things other than Cameros, keggers and corn), I didn't hate going go school anymore and settled in quickly into my new routine. I also starting making some new friends. 

Fast forward to late April of that same year and things were about to get interesting. That year, CP had an in-school field day. No classes, just a day of fun activities that students could participate in. What we chose to do was up to us, the only restriction that we were not to leave campus. Which for me lasted about as long as it took to go to my first period class where the teacher took roll and then walk almost immediately to the parking lot, get into a friend's car and leave. I didn't know that I was going to leave when I walked into school that morning; my friends Tom and Dan told me we were taking off after the attendance check. What I learned in the car as we pulled out of the school's parking lot is that another kid in our grade was having guys come out to the house for the day to hang out. He lived in Valley which was even further west than where I lived. We, the three of us, were going there to go fishing. Sweet! We stopped at my house on the way so I could grab my fishing pole and tackle box. 

When we got there, I remember someone handing me a beer. Uh, ok. There were 10 or 12 guys standing around pounding beers, many of them the up and coming athletes on the football team. To most of them, I was an unknown, but since I was with Dan and Tom that was enough to allay anyone's concerns. As it was, all I did that day was fish in the lake behind the guy's house, maybe play some Hackey-Sack and kind of nurse the one beer I'd been given. At some point during the day, the beer ran out and three of our classmates ran out to buy more. Thank you fake IDs. On the way back to the house they got into a car accident which we didn't find out about right away. I think one or two of the other guys went looking for them when they hadn't come back after an hour or two. Once we found out what had happened, we all quickly dispersed. My friend Dan or Tom – I don't remember who was driving that day – dropped me off at my house on the way back to Omaha. The next day I went to school oblivious to what was about to happen. 

Some time that morning there was a knock on the door while I was in English Lit. After a brief confab with the person outside in the hallway, our teacher came back in the classroom and said, "Beisner, Cvetas and Brown. Please take your stuff and go to the Prefect's office." Out in the hallway, we ran into other classmates who had just been given the same summons. There were whispers of "They know everything" as we marched towards whatever fate awaited us, which turned out to be immediate suspension. Everyone that was at the "party" was sent home and told we would not be allowed back until our parents had spoken to someone in authority. If memory serves, that would have been Father Cannon.

I went home, tail tucked between my legs, not knowing how my parents were going to react. (A family friend picked me up from school as I was unable to locate my mom or my dad. Remember, there were no cell phones in 1984.) I think my mom was too shocked to go off on me. My dad kind of laughed it off. I remember him sharing some story about when he was in high school and getting caught drinking beer behind the grocery store. Two or three days later, The Douglas County Gazette had a front page article about accident that included a black and white photo of the mangled car in the cornfield in which it came to rest. The moment my dad saw the picture he became furious. "Do you have any idea how lucky you and your friends are that no one got killed?" He was right of course. The car was totaled. The fact that the worst injuries were a broken arm and stitches really was a miracle. 

Early the next week following the accident, the school held a meeting with all the parents of the party goers to discuss our punishments and to stress the fact that this would not be allowed to happen again. I think "expulsion" may be have been threatened. My parents told me that they had been pulled aside and told that there had been some debate about whether or not to include me in the suspension and them in the parent meeting knowing already that I was mostly an innocent bystander. They chose to include me, they told my parents, as they thought it would be a good lesson. (Scared straight?) Maybe it was. That was my one and only suspension. I'm also 95% sure that  I never even ditched a class after that. 

Fast forward to the night of my high school graduation, some time around the 19th or 20th of May, 1986. I was still friends with Tom Brown and Dan Benak which was good because we sat next to each other on the stage at graduation: Beisner, Benak, Brown. That's how I remember it. I don't remember what I did after the ceremony but I don't think I was out late. My dad, his mom (my grandmother) and I were supposed to be driving to Joplin, Missouri the next day or the day after. That is where my dad grew up. 

I remember that I was lying in bed still asleep when the phone rang the morning after graudation. I don't know why, but I reflexively picked up the phone and mumbled hello into the receiver. "Chris? This is so-and-so at Creighton Prep. I'm afraid that I have some terrible news. Dan Benak and Tom Brown were killed last night in a car accident." I remembering hearing those words but not comprehending they meant. "What?" I said, the cobwebs suddenly clearing. The caller repeats the news, more slowly this time: "Chris, Dan and Tom were killed last night. In a car accident." I think back to the previous evening. That can't be right. I was just with both of them. We had just graduated high school together. What the fuck is happening right now? I wonder. I say something into the phone like "That can't be right" refusing to accept what I'm being told. I'm then told that there is going to be a mass held at school for Dan and Tom that afternoon or the following day. I hang up the phone. I then walk zombie like downstairs and into our kitchen. My mom and grandmother are there. I think Dad was also in the house. 

My mom asks, "Who called?"

"School." I answer in a far away voice. 

"What did they want?" 

"To tell me that Dan Brown and Dan Benak were killed last night in a car accident." I say in a monotone voice. 

"Oh my god!" my mom shouts. My dad hears my mom's raised voice and walks into the kitchen asking what's wrong. I repeat the same sentence to my father. He turns white. "Oh no." My dad worked with Tom's dad. I don't know that they were close but they definitely knew each other. He is obviously very upset by this news, but not enough to warrant changing our plans. A couple of hours later, we are in the car driving south to Missouri so that my dad and my grandma can reconnect with their family and friends. Me? I'm in the backseat reeling from the bombshell that has just exploded in my face. This was my first real experience with death. Where someone that I knew on a personal level, someone that was my own age, had died. But in my case, it wasn't just one person, it was two. Dan and Tom. Tom and Dan. Best friends to the end. 

After all the hoopla following graduation had finally died down, the two of them had decided to celebrate the best way they knew how: to go fishing. It was after midnight and they were driving north on 72nd street heading toward Lake Cunningham, fishing poles and tackle boxes in the trunk. They were stone sober as they drove through the intersection at 72nd and Maple, the light green. There was no way they could have known that at that exact moment another car, driven by a guy fleeing the police, was also going through the same intersection, the light red, at 70 miles an hour. And in that instant, 35 years ago, two lives ended and their parents joined a tribe that no loving parent ever wants to be a part of. And now, all these years later, I share this same bond with Tom and Dan's parents. If I could talk to them now, I would tell them this: 

While some of the memories have faded with time, I have never forgotten Dan and Tom. I think of them occasionally and still feel a sadness from their absence. And while I didn't know them very long, only 2 1/2 years, I'm thankful that our lives came together when they did. Even after all these years, I miss them still.