the inquisitive techie

When I was 12 years old, my two aunts who were 18 and 20 years old, were killed by a drunk driver, a man my large Irish family immediately labeled a monster. They attended all of his trials, and made sure he got the maximum penalty for his crime.

Since this was 1976, and drunk driving penalties were still lax, he got weekends in jail for a year. For killing two people. I never met the guy, but he was bad.  I just knew.

I used to build a lot of stuff and often visited this small lumber yard near my house. I would buy scraps for a buck and build birdhouses and other small projects with them.

Eventually, the guys who worked there got to know me and would just give me scraps of wood after a while. The wood was garbage to them, and they would give me boxes of scraps to go.

One day I ran into this guy that had worked there for years. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and when I asked why, he said he had only been working during the week, while I was in school. He then left me to wait on another customer.

Another staff member I knew came over and told me that the boy was involved in a terrible car accident last summer, and had killed two girls. He had been at a party, had just a few beers and hit a car that had run a stop sign.

The kid was someone I had known for years, a normal guy, who had always been nice to me.  I was torn. We all hated him, for what he had done. But I knew he was just like the rest of us, and that it was just a mistake, a horrible mistake.

I walked up to him, and told him who I was. I said “I am Kathleen and Colleen’s nephew.”  He paled, and looked sick. He then walked quickly into the back room.

I left and never went back.

The lumberyard closed a few years later, not long after a bigger lumberyard was built near the expressway.

I never saw that guy again. I wonder if he’s OK.  If he still has nightmares about that night.

He was just a kid.

We all were.