Allllllll Righty Then

Last night I had lunch with Kate Strickland, one of my dearest grade school friends and a fellow New Yorker. We met for Thai food on the Upper East Side and traded stories about college, work, and memories of dear old Annunciation Catholic School. Although it seems like 8th grade was just yesterday, apparently we're all growed up. Some of us are married, most of us are working, some of us are back in Minneapolis and a few of us have scattered across the country. But one of us is gone.

The Annunciation grapevine never told me that Andy Peterson committed suicide last October. He's been dead over a year, and I never knew. It's strange because I think about Andy on a fairly regular basis, since his crazy middle-school antics are still as entertaining in retrospect as they were when I was 12. The dinner conversation fell a little flat for a moment after I received that news. Andy was wild, uncontrollable, and hilarious as a child. Who could have ever guessed that he carried such a heavy sadness inside of him. For all of those reasons and more, I can't bear the idea of Andy being an uncomfortable silence at a dinner table. Andy, this is for you:

Thank you for all of those belly laughs. Thank you for standing on top of desks and making teachers re-evaluate their career choice. Thank you for being a backseat driver to Mrs. Rattray as she dropped 8 kids off at Centennial Lakes Movie Theater. Thank you for having that unrequited crush on Emily Pelant. Thank you for doing the very best Ace Ventura impression I have ever, ever seen. Thank you for being the poster child for ADD long before they handed kids bottles of Ritalin to reign them in. You gave my childhood so much color and so much laughter. Thanks.

Nora