I was good friends with Chris. He stayed at our house often and was more like my little brother. His death has been hard on my sister and I, her especially. It was hard for the most part because Chris was in Florida when he was killed (he had moved just about 2 months earlier) and we were all up here in Indiana. Infact the first time we saw Chris after he died was 9 days later. Naturally we were emotionally exhausted because of this and trying to relay information between here and Florida to piece together what happened. I agree. What Chris did was stupid, and I’m angry at him because he threw away his whole life. And since I had the blessing of knowing Chris so well, I know that no one made him do this as many say, chances are he would have done this if he had known how it all would end. Chris loved to live. But when he did this, he hurt his friends and family and left us with a burden that is beyond us to try and lift. However I think it is wrong to nominate him for a Darwin. Which of us haven’t done stupid things in our life time? The only thing is Chris’s killed him. I don’t find anything about his death funny. And as for those who lay the blame solely on Errol Martin or the girl driving, that is wrong also. Each of you in the car that night have a bit of the blame to carry, even you Vanessa. I feel for you having to carry that night in your head for the rest of your life, but the truth is that any of you could have done anything different that night and Chris would still be here. What if’s and blaming one another will not bring Chris back and he wouldn’t want this going on. He hated to see friends fight and turn on each other and those of you doing this on this page should be ashamed. And the person who posted this should be ashamed at mocking the death of a 15 year old boy who made a mistake. I hope his parents never come across this site, and I’m sorry I had to.

Ok, this is just to apologize for posting twice (3 x’s now). The other day when my first post went up it said error and that it didn’t go through and I didn’t see it up until I just posted the second time. Thats why I posted the second time today with basically the same thing. Sorry, don’t want to see like a complete idiot, just a normal status one.

Which of us haven’t done stupid things in our life time?

For future reference, if I manage to kill myself doing something incredibly stupid, please be sure to laugh your asses off at it.  I mean, shed a few tears, sure, for the tragic loss of a gem of a person such as myself, but then feel free to fall down laughing. . . Particularly if I manage to:
   
snuff myself while playing Russian roulette

hang myself during auto-erotic masturbatory asphyxia

electrocute myself while trying to steal cable TV

drown myself by passing out drunk in a jacuzzi

smear myself on the asphalt while (car surfing/train surfing/elevator surfing)

get drunk and wrap my car around a telephone pole.

get drunk and wrap my penis around a telephone pole.

Chop my penis off while tripping on home-brewed hallucinogenics

You may now all go back to mocking the death of this poor, hapless boy—you heartless wretches!

I just want to say that Chris was my god and still is…i loved him like my own and i will NEVER give that up! This has been so hard for all of his friends and if all you jackoffs do is read how people die then you need a hobby…take up pottery or somthing. 
(PS-I TOTALLY AGREE WITH SPENCER GO ^ TO READ!!!)

By the way…all of you who speak badly of CHRIS should die and get a darwin award for…..LIVING!!! YOU SUCK AND I HATE YOU!!!!

What you said was the most heartless thing i have ever heard…you should die and go to hell NOW!!!

Sorry Dillon, but I was busy watching some tube.  If I was any sort of decent human being, I would have been hunkered in a dark corner, weeping over the death of a total stranger, but I was watching TV, instead.  Shame on me.

For future reference, your laughter rights have been revoked.  Everyone else still gets to laugh if I kill myself in a fit of stupidity, but you have to weep ceaselessly (Ok, I’m not gonna be a total hardass about this, make it five minutes, and we’ll call it even), because you CARE about me.

But NO LAUGHING!  Because human suffering is always tragic, and never funny.  That’s why we don’t laugh when people trip, or fall down, or smack their heads on a doorframe, or hit their thumbs with hammers, or jump off of buildings because they think they can fly,

because those things aren’t funny.

Now you, wishing me death, destruction and eternal suffering in hell, THAT’s funny!

My wife just told me I’m an insensitive jerk, and I should apologize.

She’s right.  I probably shouldn’t be a total dick, since your pain is undoubtedly real—

(your laughter rights, though, if I happen to kill myself in some spectacularly stupid way, are still revoked!)

Couple of points I’d like to clear up here:

1) I’m not mocking anything about this incident. The whole situation is stupid, tragic, and could (should) have been avoided.

2) When I mentioned the Darwin award I was speaking of the everyone involved, not just Chris. Though technically it does go to the people who end up removing themselves from the gene pool through their stupidity.

3) I’m not so insensitive as to not sympathize with the survivors and the friends and family Chris had, but I’m not going to soften my stance on the issue out of concern for their feelings. Every time one of you stood by while Chris did this stupid stunt over and over again are in a way responsible for this accident. Your toleration of his stupidity only encouraged him and made him believe he was being “cool.“

4) If Chris happened to be as good as so many here claim then you should feel pretty miserable for not doing something to prevent this from happening. Everyone wants to say they couldn’t stop him, but none of you really tried outside of Vanessa.

5) Yep, lots of people do stupid things when they’re young. Most of us survive our stupidity. How is that in any way an excuse?

I would just like to say a few claims about the saint on this page Vanessa. For those of you who bow down and worship the ground she walks on because she claims to have been the only one who tried to stop Chris that night. The only one undoubtedly in the car that night who did anything but cheer him and practically push him off the roof. Vanessa, I feel for you I really do and I’m glad I was not the one there. But also I want to know what really went on. Because your account of that night changes more often than most people change their underwear. I actually still have a conversation that I had online with you in which you claimed that you were all having fun, that you did try to stop chris at first but then it was just joking around and having fun. You also were adament about how it wasn’t Errols fault or Biancas. That they were your best friends and that you couldnt believe they were getting in trouble for this because it was: Just an Accident. Now you want to claim that you were against it from the start, that it’s all Errols fault, and that you aren’t even friends with Bianca anymore for it? And when I compare my story from you to my friends they don’t exactly match up. Especially since I talked to you less than a week after the accident when you compare them to people you’ve talked to recently. Your story just keeps getting better and better. Chris is dead, tell the truth for his sake. Don’t worry so much about making yourself out to be the saint, no matter what we’ll all still love you just don’t lay blame on others if it shouldn’t be there.

This is a sad story.  A couple months ago a neighborhood kid took off on his motorcycle on a Sunday morning at about 70 mph, and ended up impaling himself on the steering column (but that was after he hit a car on its way to church.)  Kids have showing up at the intersection for months now to do impromptu candlelight services.
What that kid did was deeply stupid.  Should he be nominated for a Darwin?  I doubt it—Darwins’ are best reserved for urban legends.
My oldest brother died at 13 from a stupid act, and even as I recognize it as a stupid act, I can’t allow myself the luxury of chuckles over this kind of thing. A kid in that age group (13-17 or so) is still a child, and a child getting flooded with hormonal surges while still working through a kid’s need for independence can be a fucked up thing.  I would have hoped that Chris’s friends would’ve helped him, but I think he might’ve need a bit more than the moral guidance of 15 yr olds.
  Nowiser, you’re a high school teacher, aren’t you?  Haven’t you seen a bit too much of this kind of thing?

wow.. I think you people that are saying bad stuff about Chris are truely cold hearted, how could you say something like that about him, seriously. You know that it’s going to hurt and effect those that loved him. wow…

Maryh…i TOTALLY agree with you…now i dont want to upset chris’s FLORIDA friends but if chris still lived in INDIANA nothing like this would have happened and we would all be happy and stuff but since he was thousands of mile away…i cant do anything….i totally understand what you say but i still standby what i said (see above) and you guys really dont know what i am going through (maybe maryh because of her bro :( )  but this is the single most hardest thing i have ever been through and it hurts so bad…....

les, whats a blog

Nowiser, you’re a high school teacher, aren’t you? Haven’t you seen a bit too much of this kind of thing?

No, I teach English to freshman at a state college, as part of my penance for ever signing up to be a grad student.

As for seeing too much of this kind of thing, I guess I’m just a cold-hearted bastard—primarily because I was walking disaster zone at that age.  I drove way too fast, I drank way too much, and sometimes I drank way too much and then drove way too fast.

I was a complete asshole—and if I had managed to kill myself, and more probably someone else, I would understand if my friends and direct family mourned my death.  They love me.  They’re allowed.  But for complete strangers to characterize it as a tragedy?
Please. 

Come to think of it, maybe I have seen a bit too much of this kind of thing.  Tragic is when someone gets killed by someone ELSE’s stupidity.  And you can chalk car surfing up to youthful exuberance, an underdeveloped brain, hormones, whatever.  By the same token, I could claim that my alcoholism is a disease—but I would hope that society wouldn’t look at me wrapping my car around a tree and say “what a tragedy.“  What a crock of shit.  Chris isn’t some sort of victim here.  He didn’t get run down, or shot, or die of some sort of horrible disease.

He climbed onto the roof of a moving vehicle, and left a fourteen year old girl to drive.

Did Chris’s behavior put the girls in the car at risk?  Did the car flip?  Does the fact that the girls didn’t die somehow make what Chris did excusable?  I wonder how the community at large would feel about this “tragedy” if the truck had planted itself into a telephone pole, and one of the girls had had her head caved in.  Hmmm.  Yeah, poor Chris.  I wonder how well that would play in those circumstances.

I don’t think of my own youthful behavior as excusable—I pick that scab open every day and shame myself into not drinking.  But I suppose I should be more generous with Chris than I am with myself.

I’m sorry I made a crack about this kid’s death to someone who actually knew him, and who misses him.  Their pain is real, and my comment was rude.

But carsurfing to your death doesn’t qualify as “tragic” by a long shot.  And if it helps y’all cope with your grief to curse at me, or wish me death and damnation. . .

Well, you just go ahead and do whatever’s gonna help you heal—

how do u do this:hang yourself while auto-erotic masturbatory asphyxia, and get drunk and wrap your penis around a telephone pole.

idiot.  You don’t do them at the same time, you schmuck.  You have to do the penis-wrapping first—then, once the appendage has been stretched appropriately, you find a suitable place (closets work well), loop the modified appendage over the hangar rod, and. . .

Why the hell am I explaining this to you?—if you can’t figure it out for yourself you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

Dillon, if you’re still reading this blog, I understand your anger about the death of you friend, Chris.  And it’s not a bad thing for you to work out your anger anonymously on the net.  I’m glad you’re able to express your grief—Your friend obviously meant very much to you, and you shouldn’t forget that.  Please-PLEASE- find someone in your school or town that you can talk to about this.  Believe me, it makes a big difference.  I think you’re a good guy.  Make Chris’s memory count.

Nowiser—
Man, you’re no cold-hearted bastard.  You were there once and you saw the dumb-ass things that kids do.  It’s a painful thing to see—I have a young son, and I dread the moment he gets it into his noggin to try out some of the bone-headed stunts I attempted as a teenager. And I truly hope he doesn’t take up my love of hooch. But you seem like a good guy (from your posts) and I’m guessing you made the right kind of impressions on your students. 
Keep up the struggle- and I’ll do my best to help
(although I’m a neurotic freakin’ mess)
mh

Whether he died by someone else’s stupidity or his own, that boy’s parents had to bury their dead son, and that boy’s friends had to bury their friend, and that’s what makes it tragic. Was his age an excuse for his lack of forethought? Hell no. It is what it is, an utterly stupid stunt which cost a boy his own life, his parents their son, his friends their friend.

There are no bad guys on this thread - save maybe a few at the very top*. Even those who never knew the kid are standing where they are because of some highly emotional experience. Les lost his friend, nowiser has his past, maryh has her brother, and I… I know what it is like to make some really stupid decisions (and to be caught up in someone else’s really stupid decisions), feel incredibly bad for them, and then be relentlessly kicked around for it. Granted, no one died. But I am seeing such raw pain in everyone’s posts - and for these kids, I was concerned when I read Vanessa’s blog which clearly points out so many thoughts of suicide among her peers, and Vanessa herself is obviously not skipping rope these days. Yes, they need to understand - and I will just bet they do - that this boy’s actions were stupid, that whoever made no attempt to stop it should have, etc etc. and this story should be told and retold to kids who just might find themselves in a situation like this someday. I have no answers, only thoughts. And my thought on this is that from the top to the bottom, it is just damn sad.

*By the time this thread hit the second post presumptions were flying, and I am sure this is not the only place it happened. Human nature and all.

Hear, hear, Covie.  I wish the best for these kids, and they’re in a truly unlovely situation now.  “Stupid’  has little to do with it: it’s about the pain of losing someone.
Happens-  Whether its thru car surfing or cancer.
Eventually, we see it all.

ok…chris was a really good friend to me and you people who say he was stupid should seriously die… because none of you((unless you knew him…and were close friends with him))know the pain that I’m goin through!!  it’s completely insane!!  i would do ANYTHING to just see him again..or just hear his voice, and NONE of you understand!!  what he did was stupid, i know and understand that…but all he was doin was trying to have a little fun…and the consequences were REALLY bad!  and i wish that it wouldn’t have happened…but there really isn’t anything anyone can do now…except for remember him and all of the GREAT times you had with him((cuz we all know there wasn’t a bad time spent with him)) so for all of you that have nothing better to do then to mock or make fun of my friend go to HELL and try to make yourself useful in life, instead of trying to hurt people that knew chris ((or any others you are talking about on here)) because you enjoy seeing people hurt…what a bunch of asses!

Trust me, I know the kind of pain you’re going through. I am not unsympathetic to those who knew Chris and are dealing with his loss, but at the same time I’m not going to sugar coat the truth of the situation to make people feel better. There’s a solid lesson to be learned here and most of you aren’t learning it.

Amanda (and all you other drama queens), I lost a friend in highschool to the very same thing. That was 14 years ago. It was just as stupid then as it is now, and you cannot expect people to sit back and mourn the “senseless tragedy” as if they knew the deceased themselves or to refrain from commenting on the lack of intelligence involved in attempting this kind of bullshit.

ok…brandi, you say you went through the exact same thing in high school, i doubt it or else you wouldn’t be being a bitch about it…you would understand the pain we are goin through, and know that no teenager should be goin through this!  but i doubt that any of you “older” people on here know how to give sympathy to younger people…since your on this site for a bunch of asses!  this site is for rude, heartless, people…who have nothin better to do with their lives then torture people who have lost someone close to them!!!  like i said before GO TO HELL!!!