Former Member

It's great that their annual will have a page dedicated to Chris' memory. It's sad that they have to do anything like that at all, but Chris isn't the first student to commit suicide and even sadder that he won't be the last. There are too many kids who slip through the cracks and don't have the support network that Chris had. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It really does get better!

I'm surprised that Bash & Scotty made it almost to the end of their Senior Year before one of their Herero classmates figured out that they are Gay. No matter how discreet they thought they were, they were too close to be just best friends. I still think their classmates would be more open-minded than they're giving them credit for since they are both influential in their own ways.

It's horrible when parents reject their kids just because they're LGBTQ. You'd think that people would have learned better by now, but fundamentalist churches still preach their hateful messages instead of the fundamental lesson their bible teaches: love one another. And some people are incapable of seeing anything beyond just black and white, us or them. The world is filled with not just shades of gray, but a whole spectrum of technicolor beauty!

It was only a matter of time before a Brad tried to take advantage of Scotty's celebrity status. I'm glad it was relatively mild, but sorry he wasn't able to bring himself to apologize to the hostess. Teenagers in small towns are generally more polite than their peers in bigger cities. ;–) And, of course, if things are going too smoothly something disastrous has to happen to break up the monotony…

Is Tracy buying a new car? She didn't mention it, but that's the usual procedure when a parent passes their car down to their child. I was thinking that since Bash was the narrator, he'd be likely to judge his own driving more highly than an outside observer might. But Scotty's father and Junior both agree with his assessment! I guess this is a preview of how Scotty's talent will affect them both in the future.

I thought the Celts (at least the Welsh) loved long words! They certainly use long place names. They wouldn’t have stolen the spaces, but maybe they ‘vandalized’ them. ;–)

I am the cross my brothers are forced to bear. It would be too embarrassing for them if they had to explain to anyone why they have ended communication with me. So they do the minimum to keep up appearances. Of course, I would have stopped talking to them except they started having kids. I wanted to be in the lives of my nieces and nephews. Unfortunately, my younger brother’s kids seem to have divorced themselves from our family even before their parents do.

Languages like Hawaiian and Japanese have long words because they have fewer phonemes (sounds) to create them out of – and even so, Japanese seems to have many homonyms that can only be told apart by context or the Kanji (Chinese characters) used. ;–)

Somewhere back in history someone started taxing the spaces between words in German – or maybe the Vikings stole them all. Those are the only explanations that make sense. Why else would they create such long and unwieldy words? ;–)

Bring Tom back? ;–) Get your Team Tom shirts here! They feature the Union Jack with a large Red Maple Leaf superimposed over it! A blue ’Team Tom’ in a bold graffiti-style font completes the look. Also available is a Brexit shirt with a Canada-shaped Canadian Flag and a UK-shaped Union Jack anchored off the coast of the Maritime Provinces. Special clearance price. Buy now, offer expires soon! Sorry, offer not valid in the Republic of Ireland.

My recent experience with my two Aunts dying less than two months apart is only a faint shadow of what it’s like to lose a parent. My mother’s middle sister was sarcastic and blunt, but also adventurous and lived on the opposite coast from me so I rarely spent much time with her. My mother’s second sister, my Lesbian(?) Aunt, was around most of my childhood, but we never really had a conversation together. Two sisters who were more unalike than they were alike. Unusual for the era, my grandparents sent all five of their daughters to college in the ‘40s and ‘50s. I’ll miss them, but I never really knew them. Louis is much younger than I was when I lost my parents. In the case of my mother who died first, she had suffered from a very long period of decline. She had severe memory problems that we thought were Alzheimer’s, but were diagnosed as a brain tumor. The tumor was successfully removed, but she never regained her memories and wasn’t herself by then. With my father, he had a cancer in his throat and he too had successful surgery. But it recurred and he decided not to have any treatment due to his age (it was unlikely to have any effect in any case). He died a year and a half after my mother.

Déjà vu! Déjà vu! ;–)

I’m glad the boys are now Out to Coach Hastinger. It doesn’t surprise me that he already knew. Others noticed how Bash & Scotty interacted and the coach has seen thousands of examples of teenaged boys interacting – I’m sure they’re obvious to anyone paying attention and the coach would have the experience of his Gay son to compare with too. ;–)

Scotty is a much better person than I am. I’m petty and vindictive – and I hold grudges, sometimes long after I’ve forgotten why they started. I wish I could be as forgiving as Scotty is. ;–)

Bash was clever enough to use Scotty’s composition, Amorèdella mia Vite, for the engraving on the rings. And it was nice of them to avoid stealing Junior’s thunder by announcing their own engagement on the same night. So much love in the air! ;–)

It was nice that Bobby and Stan were able to be there for Scotty’s performance. ;–)

Aside for Bobby, everybody’s Gaydar worked really well. ;–)

I’m glad that Stan is going to continue volunteering at the homeless shelter. Homeless shelters don’t just need volunteers on holidays. The fact that he’s making connection with clients suggests that he’s learned from his experiences. Homeless people need all sorts of services and most areas have agencies that attempt to help them with those needs. But there are usually very strict government regulations on where and how food can be prepared that is served to the public. Those regulations often prevent food prepared in home kitchens from being donated to most homeless shelters. It’s different, of course, if you take the food directly to homeless people outside shelters.

Three funerals and a new Aunt for Clay? ;–)

Bash & Scotty are like a teenaged crisis negotiation team! They know exactly what to say to defuse tense situations. They lead by example and have much more influence on their classmates than they realize! ;–)

The boys are getting careless. It’s only a matter of time before they Out themselves! But I don’t think the fallout will be as bad as they think… ;–)

@Cole Matthews was confusing Fahrenheit with Celsius. It was as hot as a desert in there at 66°C (151°F)! That space heater was really pumping out the heat! ;–)

But lucky you! You get to binge-read this instead of waiting between chapters. Details will have a much better chance of remaining fresh in your memory. Plus you’re half my age and have a better memory anyway! ;–)

I use Gmail, but only rarely from a browser. I use Apple’s Mail.app to access my gmail accounts to avoid seeing ads. I prefer to use DuckDuckGo for searches specifically because they do not track you. I have used Google to share photos with family though. And I search for videos to download on YouTube. I have never had an account on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, MySpace, or Pinterest.

Opera goes out of its way to account for the idiosyncrasies introduced by Microsoft. This makes things nicer for the user, but disguises non-standard behavior on the website. Safari tends to adhere to very strict standards and often trips over the bad behavior of others.