Fifteen things about Paul Wendell Elkins Jr. (1972-2007):

An old friend died last week...much too young at age 35. He had been ill for over a month but I was unaware until I read his obituary in the newspaper. I don't suppose that we were ever best friends, and in fact we hadn't talked much over the past decade; nevertheless, his passing affected me and brought back a few things:*

* - these are things as I remember them...not as they necessarily were.

1. I met Wendell Elkins (as I knew him then) twenty years ago...We shared homeroom in ninth grade. We soon found that we also shared similar senses of humor, and became friends.
2. Wendell had many other friends, such as Joe. It soon seemed as you couldn't see one without the other. (Kissing my first girl at the school dance, looking up to notice that the song had ended and we were alone in the middle of the floor...there was Wendell and Joe, laughing hysterically)
3. Wendell was born in October, so turned 16 earlier than most of us. He had a blue Mustang (similar to the one I received the following year, but darker and a notchback instead of a hatchback) with a serious-sounding stereo system. State of the art Sony cassette player, woofers, the works. We sat in my driveway one day, blasting Tone-Loc's "Wild Thing". It was a hard standard to meet.
4. Wendell also liked computers, as did I. He had several games such as Police Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Earl Weaver Baseball. I would borrow them for a while...we also experimented with online gaming. This was in 1989, before the internet was widespread. I had somehow convinced my father to sign us up on Compuserve, a text-only online service. They had a rudimentary MMORPG that Wendell and I were poking around one day. For some reason, we had named our character "Kevin Bond" after a mutual friend who would soon be my arch-nemesis du jour. Anyway, we met another player in the game, and after some small talk, brutally destroyed him. Later, we regenerated in another area of the game(under a new name) and ran into the same person, with a new player character as well. He said, "Some idiot named Kevin Bond JUST KILLED ME!" Wendell and I roared with laughter.
5. By early 1989, my first car (1972 Vega) had been partially restored and sat in our driveway in drivable, yet incomplete condition. Wendell came by one night and we decided to take my car for a test run. I didn't have my license at this point, but no matter...Mom was asleep, Dad was off camping...we took a few back roads, and I suppose we ended up on Nowhere Road, because I noticed that we were a bit further out than I had imagined...we soon reached Hwy 441, within sight of the famed Bulldog Inn. We retraced our steps and returned to my house...of course, all of the lights were on and an angry Mother awaited me. "Gotta go", murmured Wendell, leaving hastily.
6. One school day, at lunch, Wendell thought that it would be amusing to carve letters out of the cheese slice that was included on the menu. He nibbled out the words "BITE ME" and arrayed them on the top of his tray. The assistant principal sauntered by and leaned over to see what Wendell was up to; Wendell hurriedly ate a few letters, rendering the cheesy script unreadable. "Oh", he explained, "it just said 'Eat Me'." Quickly concluding that this might not be the best alternative, he helpfully added, "Uh...eat me...like cheese."
7. Later in 1989, girlfriend #2 arrived. She lived in Athens when we met, but soon moved to Monroe, which would prove to be a problem since I had killed my car on the way to school, not long after our first solo date. Wendell offered to drive me to Monroe, provided I offered up some gas money. It seemed like a good deal, except that I often didn't get my money's worth...several times, after we were there for fifteen minutes or so, Wendell was ready to return home. No doubt, it had a dampening effect on my youthful romance.
8. On one such sojourn, we noticed an abundance of dark clouds and lightning during the drive. Wendell looked out the window: "Hey, look at that funnel shaped cloud!" Upon arriving in Monroe, we proceeded to the Dairy Queen. The DQ window guy : "Did you guys see the tornado?" Well, yes, I suppose that we did.
9. The next year, I had my own Mustang, and was able to chauffeur myself. My girlfriend was babysitting for her aunt (out of town) and we had a rare chance for an unsupervised evening together. What could be better for a seventeen-year old boy?! I was driving over to the babysitting destination when a strange vehicle pulled up behind me. It closed up on my rear bumper, mere inches from my car. I frowned and looked in my mirrors...impossible to see because of the lights. I made several turns and the car matched every move I made. I blundered forward, finally arriving at the designated house. The mystery car pulled up beside me...of course, it was Wendell. He and Jeremy were out riding and saw my car. They followed me inside and hung around just long enough to be irritating. They soon picked up on my surly demeanor and left.
10. It wasn't all fun and games. Later that same year (1990) my close childhood friend Clint was killed in a car accident. I found out when girlfriend #3 came to the grocery store where I worked and broke the news to me. It had happened that afternoon, 15 minutes after school had let out. In shock, I somehow returned to work. As luck would have it, my task that night was to change the prices on the cereal aisle. (This was before they installed bar code scanners at our store...so we did things the old-fashioned way...that is to say, slowly). As I glumly crossed out prices and re-labeled the boxes, Wendell arrived and found me. We talked over the situation, trying to comprehend the finality of things. Wendell described how he had talked to Clint after school. They briefly spoke; Clint ended by saying that he needed to get home. Then he was gone.
11. Later, date undetermined, Wendell came over to my house. We went fishing at my family's pond. It was late afternoon, the magic hour. We spent a couple of hours at the pond, talking and enjoying the surroundings. I guess we knew that changes were in the wind.
12. College years: Wendell decided that he would rather go by Paul. It was hard to mentally adjust, but I tried for his sake. We didn't see very much of each other.
13. In 1993 I was living in my first apartment. Paul gave me an enrollment package for this new service called "America Online". I joined and was soon discovering this whole internet thing.
14. The next fourteen years flew by. I worked a string of unsatisfying jobs but was fortunate enough to have a wife and two daughters to keep me sane. Paul would call every now and then, and we would talk. Then he moved to Atlanta, pursuing his career goals. He worked for Studiocom and Halcyon. I found a rubber-banded stack of the old computer games that we used to play over a decade previously. I emailed him and asked for his new address so that I might mail him the games. He seemed rather indifferent, but I dutifully mailed them back to him, somehow feeling as though I needed to. That was in July of 2003. We didn't speak again.
15. Paul died on November 30, 2007. Requiescat in pace.