Today, a friend on Facebook (and fellow high school classmate) posted a birthday message to another classmate, that I will call “Toby” for this post. Lots of people “liked” this post and left comments about how funny “Toby” was and how he was such a great guy. All this outpouring of love for this long dead guy angered me. I really had to resist the urge to post a blunt and unflattering comment (that surely would have gotten me condemned by everyone).<\/p>\n
“Toby” was killed in 1993. He had become a North Carolina State Trooper after graduation. During a routine stop on the interstate his vehicle was plowed into from behind by a semi driven by a guy who was hopped up on drugs. Needless to say, he was killed … and then lionized because he was a trooper and was killed while on duty.<\/p>\n
See … I remember “Toby” too. Only I don’t remember him as the “Funny Guy” or “Good Guy” or “Valiant State Trooper.”<\/p>\n
He was the person I wanted to avoid every day of junior high and high school. I remember him as the guy who would call me names and say mean things. I remember him as the guy who occasionally would hit me for no reason. I remember him as the guy who would grab my things and not give them back or break them. “Toby” was the guy who bullied me. When we graduated, it was a great relief to know that I would never have to see or deal with him ever again.<\/p>\n
Fast forward 20+ years and it’s still hard for me to feel that there was anything good or redeeming about him. It was tempting to tell people that today … to tell them that “the guy you remember so fondly was a mean person that did harm to others for no reason other than he could.”<\/p>\n
I know people change and maybe he did. I sure hope he did and didn’t make life miserable for other people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, a friend on Facebook (and fellow high school classmate) posted a birthday message to another classmate, that I will call “Toby” for this post. Lots of people “liked” this post and left comments about how funny “Toby” was and how he was such a great guy. All this outpouring of love for this long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8EnCu-156","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4160"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4164,"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions\/4164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theboywonder.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}