i really don’t know what to think right now… a friend just dropped some crazy news on me and i’m just… in shock! i just found out that my best friend from elementary school is in prison for 1st degree manslaughter… for 20 years!

apparently the incident happened over 10 years ago, but i just now found out about it. we lost touch after i moved away from connecticut, although we did hang out a few times on my visits back. he and i lived in the same building in stamford. i lived on the 5th floor and he was on 7.

to make a long story short, he and another kid that lived in our building, along with two other kids i didn’t know, got drunk and/or high one night and beat some 15 year old kid within an inch of his life. the kid was in a coma and eventually died from the severe beating he sustained. all this went down in the parking lot of my former elementary school…

so what does this have to do with me? well it’s simple. i moved from stamford when i was 10 years old, but had i stayed, would my fate be the same as his now? he was my best friend… we did everything together, and had we continued to be best friends into our teens, i’m almost positive that i would have gone down that same path.   in our old neighborhood there wasn’t really much choice, you had to handle your business by any means necessary.

in no way am i condoning what happened, but he was a good kid, from a good family, corrupted by the environment in which he was forced to grow up in. that could have been me… and that’s a scary thought.