I was writing a post about my Christmas video game memories and it made me think about something that happened this year. Not to me, but to a friend of mine from college. It seemed to be a strange coincidence, but I had planned to reach out to him since I hadn't heard from him in a long while. That's when I heard the terrible news.
My friendship with Mitt stretched back to second grade. I went to JW Arnold Elementary school in Jonesboro, GA. The best way to describe him in second grade was Data from the Goonies. Mitt was a cool kid, pretty much like me and we got along fairly well. After second grade, I moved to a different school district and changed schools and never saw him again. Well, until a few years later.
Mitt went to the same martial arts school as my friend Matt. I ran into Mitt once again at Matt's birthday party in middle school. It was a weird coincidence, but it got weirder from there. We finally reignited our friendship in college, all while playing Pump It Up (which is a DDR clone, which I felt was superior in every way).
I played Pump It Up quite religiously, and if you've ever seen me play, I'm pretty damn good (well was, I'm sure playing it now would physically kill me). I started playing in high school and was overjoyed to see the rec center at GSU had one. Needless to say, I went there all the time and fed that machine my quarters (it was priced at $.50, which was a steal).
One day while playing, I saw a kid who looked familiar. After I had played he asked me if I went to JW Arnold and I was like "haha so it is you!" We had an immediate friendship, and a common interest with the dancing game. We met up at the rec center almost daily for my entire freshman year at GSU and played Pump It Up all the freakin' time.
We hung out quite a bit, I even took him our on our Sea Doo's when his family came up to camp out at Lake Lanier. He was a total noob at driving PWC's and flipped off the front while he tried to tow the tube. We had a good laugh after we had determined that he hadn't broken his neck.
After I switched schools, we got busy and didn't get to hang out as much. Every once in a while when I was down on the southside, we would get together at Southlake Mall and play Pump It Up. It sound so dorky, but we both loved playing that stupid game and we found every excuse to play. One time when we were at Tilt playing Pump, some dude tried to sell us LSD. That shit was weird.
After a year or two, we both got busy and sort of lost touch, although I seemed to run into him at total random. The last time I saw him was a few years ago before a friends wedding. It was good to see him, and I now regret not making time to see an old friend. I regret it becasue I can't do it anymore, because he's now dead.
Earlier this year, Mitt was driving near the Starlite Drive-In off of Moreland in Atlanta. His car broke down, so he went to ask for help nearby. Instead of being greeted with a friendly hand, he was greeted with a bullet to his chest. A bullet that would prove fatal. He was shot, and left to die.
Mitt was a pretty extraordinary guy, probably the absolute nicest person I've ever met. I don't know why these sort of things happen, and why they happen to good people. It was the worst case of wrong place at the wrong time, and now my friend is gone forever. I wish now that I had gotten to share a laugh with him just one more time. I really wish that this had never happened to him at all. Rest in peace, friend.
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