so the new year begins...
how is it 2002 already? a couple years ago i thought to myself, golly, by the time the olympics roll around, i'll be 20...i'm going to be so old!! and here i am, 20 years old. good god, i'm going to be 30 soon! where does the time fly?
i found out a couple days ago that daniel malloy passed away. i've known this guy since 3rd grade. first day of third grade- we had just moved to california, and i didn't know ANYONE- i sit down in an empty seat towards the back of the room, only to have jason abner say to me, "that seat's been saved." I was devastated. i didn't know anyone, and to top it off, i get booted out of the first seat i sit down in. turns out he had saved it for daniel malloy. i can't say that we were good friends. in fact, i don't even think i can label us as friends. not that we were enemies, just that we never talked to each other much. i mean, in elementary school, everyone in your little class of 30 was a friend. so i guess in a sense, we were friends in elementary school, just cause we were in the same class together. come to think of it, i think he was in my same class from 3rd to 6th grade.
but then came jr high. o that dreaded jr high. i hated it. jr. high was when everyone broke off into little groups. dan went into his group, and i in mine. and high school came, and we never had any classes together so i never saw him. him and his group of friends were in the "cool" group, so i was always intimidated. its funny how this guy that you've had a class with all throughout elementary school suddenly became too daunting to talk to by the time high school rolled around. funny how that happens.
i knew a guy that used to live around the corner from my house, isaac garza. we were friends up to high school. for some reason, once high school rolled around, we just stopped talking. he had his group, i had mine. it was always wierd seeing him around school. its was always, do i say hi? or not? what if i say hi and he doesn't? or, what do i do? i think i usually went with the half smile or the rude nothing at all. i don't remember having a conversation with him in high school, even though i've known him since 3rd grade. even though he lived around the corner. we just didn't talk. but at the first homecoming game after high school, i saw isaac, and he saw me. we said hi and made small talk as if that whole ignoring each other during high school thing didn't happen. it was wierd. i asked about him, he asked about me. it was as if we were dear friends that had not seen each other in ages, when in reality, it had only been months. isaac has since moved from his house i believe. i don't see him around anymore. funny how high school does that to people.
anyway, my whole point behind this isaac story is that he is similar to dan. we weren't enemies, but we simply didn't talk enough to have any kind of a friendship. but i have fond memories of dan. he was always very funny. and i believe a genuinely kind hearted person. i don't know a single person that can come right out and say, i don't like daniel malloy, he was liked by everyone. pablo tells me there were uncontrollable emotions at his funeral. i wouldn't doubt it. i wish i can sit here and say that we were good friends, but i can't. all i can say is that he will be greatly missed by all who knew him.