Televised Demise

This whole Ter.rell Ow.ens thing struck a major nerve this morning.

So you know how he broke his finger in a game, had surgery like, the next day, and then was taking some pain meds for it. Last week Coach Parcels said he was having a bad reaction to them.

So apparently his publicist was with him last night and he took the whole bottle of pills, and she tried to pry the last two pills from his hands.

The publicist tried to spin the story initially. (PS...I'm a publicist. It's her job to lie.)

As I'm typing, the Dallas Pol.ice Dept is holding their press conference (which is terribly uninformative, by the way).

Imagine being this low (IF TRUE), and then having it broadcast worldwide.

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Three summers ago I got a call from a kid who grew up across the street from me.

"Wise, um, The One's dead."
"Why?"

They found his body in the river in Alb.any. Ever the journalist, the first thing I did was call the AB.C News affiliate there to confirm the info. Suicides are not usually reported, but they were able to tell me that none of the three floaters that turned up in the last few days had been identified as black males.

Three days later I was back on the block where we all grew up... where I fell in love with The One at the tender age of 6...the corner where I'd go out and meet him at his bus stop before school at age 12... where I'd sit on his lap as puberty raged...where the processional led his closed casket to his final resting place.

I hadnt spoken to him in a while, yet I still loved him with the affection of a preteen. I had had a dream about him literally 2 weeks prior, and then emailed him and his brother to say what's up. Was terribly disappointed when the email came back to me undeliverable.

I guess he had already begun to withdraw from the world by then, and now he's gone, of his own volition.

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A guy who was in my 9th grade Spanish class didn't show up for school one day, and by the end of that week we were all lined up at his wake. He chose a rope.

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This woman stopped my boy Flavius in the grocery store one day a few year back. She recognized him as one of her son's old classmates. She said he had been gone for a few years now. He chose a gun.

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In college one of my closest friends at a different school told me about the day he slept for 27 straight hours. The pills didn't take.

(IF TRUE), the shit hits close to home...on a level beyond a police report or breaking news flash. On a level that makes me know that all of Ow.ens' antics were indeed for attention. But I wish for once he could live outside of the news. I don't wanna hear about it, cuz it's none of my business. But if I watch tv or go online, I'll be force-fed all the spin and speculation.

But imagine what it must be like for him to recover from his own demise on TV.