Week 1 Storytelling: The Death of Cody

Here lies Fred,

Who was alive and is dead.

If it had been his father,

I would much rather;

If it had been his brother,

Still better than another;

If it had been his sister,

No one would have missed her;

If it had been the whole generation,

So much the better for the nation.

But as its' only Fred,

Who was alive and is dead,

Why there's no more to be said.

The bloody cones are out again, standing in the middle of the road for no reason but to make everyone drive around them.  It was 7:34am back in the fall of 2011, and I was going to be a few minutes early for my chemistry class.  It’s never a good thing when I wake up early.

I let my mind wonder as I usually do in the mornings to try to get some blood flow to my brain.  Death is the first thought that morning.  I had never really cared about death.  I guess I never had anyone to miss.

This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that my next thought was Cody, my best friend.  This sequence of events and images in my mind surprised me and sent me into a fit of tears and rather loud sobs.  Apparently, I did have someone to miss.

If there was some accident…  Say his family was in a boat and one person was drowning.  He could save them but only at the expense of being eaten by piranhas.  He would totally sacrifice himself.  However, my selfish self sitting in my car at 7:43am would rather his brother, father, or mother die.  Torn apart even.  Just leave Cody alone.  He’s the only person I couldn’t live without.

If anyone saw me sitting there with snot and a concentrated salt solution running down my face, it would have easily been the most embarrassing moment of my life.  The good part about waking up a few minutes early was that I had a few minutes to compose myself.  I selected an upbeat Sister Hazel song from my iPhone and just waited it out, not allowing my mind to wonder anymore.  I took a look at myself in the rear-view mirror before heading into the science building of Rose State College.  My eyes were a fierce blue-grey in contrast to the red.  I’ll blame it on allergies, I thought.

Cody didn’t die and hasn’t yet.  Actually, he’s sitting in the room adjacent to me studying for an EMF quiz.  I yelled at him to spell ‘piranhas’ for me.  We’re in love now.

Personal photo of Cody Taylor and myself, Skylar Snowden. (16 years old)

Authors Note:

This old nursery rhyme was taken from The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897). He told me to write about our love story for this assignment, so I did. In a morbid sort of way... I honestly still don't know if it's a good or bad thing that Fred is dead. Maybe it just is what it is. The crazy tangent about saving someone is actually an inside joke. We use this analogy when discussing the origin of morality. That's another story entirely. I'll get more creative and more positive as the semester progresses. Hopefully...