RICHARD WHEELER

This is going to be my longest post yet. I briefly talked about him on January 11th. But this is the full story.

I first met Richard in the summer of 1981. My parents saw fit to send me to Camp Sinawa. The buses left from the YMCA. For those of us in Two Rivers (seven of us?) they would send a van to come pick us up at the high school. That's where I first met Richard. Richard, his best friend John Kern, and their two sisters all went to camp. While at camp, I remember wanting to hang around with both of them. They seemed more intelligent than some of the meatballs we camped with.

The summer of 1982 saw the same reunion. Although I'm not sure the sisters were there. This was now the summer after 5th grade. And according to Meff's timeline, he had already infiltrated into Richard's life. And the friendship between Richard and John was waning. I saw evidence of this first hand.

One of the things we did at camp was sing songs. And the camp counselors kept asking us if we remembered any from previous years. Time after time, John would yell out (singing) "Way down yonder and not far away." The next lines of this goofy tune are "Blue Jay died of a whooping couch. He whooped and he whooped and he whooped all day. He whooped his head and his tail right off."

It's amazing how this crap sticks with you.

Anyway, they never chose that song to sing. And finally, after John had tried to get that song started for about the 20th time, Richard screamed at him, "WILL YOU SHUT UP!" I haven't heard that tune since. But it no doubt will be stuck in my head all damn night now.

My next real memories of Richard are from 8th grade. Richard had a folder or something that grew and grew to epic proportions. This thing was literally 12 inches thick. His folder grew to celebrity status.

Back at Clarke we had a phrase called "book burning." It had nothing to do with library books. What that phrase meant to us was flinging someone's books, papers, or notebooks on the floor, and making a mess.

By this time, I had aligned myself with Kevin Dehne. Kevin was obsessed with burning Richard's folder. He talked about it all the time. He made plans for getting it. Finally, he was able to do it. What a fricken' mess! Richard wasn't the least bit upset. He knew it was going to happen at some point. And he had repeatedly stated that there was nothing of importance in it. His "important" papers he apparently kept in a smaller, more managable folder. Kevin was so proud of his accomplishment. Of course Mr. Kern knew exactly who was responsible. And he made Kevin clean it all up. Kevin happily obliged. It took him about 20 minutes to clean it all. But he was happy.

During our freshman year, I had Richard's father as a homeroom teacher. As it was alphabetical, Richard was in there too. The two of us sat next to each other at the table in the back of the room. But we rarely spoke. As it turns out, unbeknownst to me, Richard loathed me. Why? Because I was becoming closer to Meff - and thus intruding on his friendship with him. Richard said that at times, Meff would go on and on about my exploits. It obviously irked him.

During that year, Richard wore bowling shoes to school. People used to go up to Meff all the time and ask him, "Why does Richard wear bowling shoes?" Of course Meff had no idea. That was just Richard being Richard.

At some point during that year, Mike Zeman had pissed off Todd Zinn. (More on that later). At the time, Mike's foot (leg?) was broken, and in a cast. The ever-grumpy Todd wanted to get back at Mike. But he had his pride. He was going to wait until Mike was no longer on crutches. But that didn't stop Todd from constantly threatening Mike. Richard found this whole episode amusing. He would openly mock Todd, by laughing and saying, "What are you gonna do Todd... beat him up?" Todd didn't get it, and simply yelled back that he was gonna kick the shit out of Mike.

At the end of the school year, I got into some major trouble by committing some vandalism at the school. The damage took several weeks to do. Although a few people knew of our exploits, Richard was the only one who actually witnessed us doing the acts. I'll explain that whole episode later.

After our freshman year, Meff moved to the Milwaukee area. Richard and I both lost our best friend - to some degree. Meff was constantly visiting us or his grandparents, who still lived in Two Rivers.

A day or two before our sophomore year, Richard called me on the phone. Mike Zeman and Meff had shared a locker the previous year. But only Richard and I knew that he'd moved. Richard devised a plan that he and I should pretend that Meff never existed. And when Mike began to ask about Meff, we'd respond with "Who?"

Richard and I became best friends that year. We remained friends throughout our junior year as well. When Meff came up, we all hung out together. Richard and I had very similar tastes. We were both warped out of our minds. We both liked to shock people. For the most part, we didn't set out to shock anyone. That was just who we were. And if things we said shocked people... even better.

Between the two of us, Richard was the social one. I tended to be social more often when he was around me. The two of us worked great together. In time, we became obsessed with The Beatles, Charles Manson, death, satanism, and just about any other non-normal thing one can dream up. We were weird. But it was a good weird. Of course most people never got to really know us.

Richard and Jeff Bodwin used to have a series of pencil fights after school. The two of them would go at it, and try to mark each other up in the face. It was an odd spectacle to view.

Richard often wore trenchcoats. Would that even be allowed today?

During sophomore year, I became friends with Dave Svatek. Dave was on the opposite end of the spectrum as Richard and I. But eventually we became a trio. But Richard and I knew that Dave was different than us. And we treated him very poorly at times. We would often mock him and insult him. We really hurt his feelings at times. Richard and I borrowed a line from the Beatles, and mockingly referred to Dave and everyone else in the so-called "in crowd" as being part of the "beautiful people."

Richard got a driver's license. The addition of a car added another element to our madness. Now we had the ability to be obnoxious on the road, all over town. Not a weekend went by where we didn't drive around listening to oldies music, screaming clever obscenities to anyone within earshot. If we weren't yelling at people, we were tossing pennies at pretty women, shouting, "Here's a penny for your tits!" Yes, we were classy guys.

When we were stopped at a red light, I would often reach over and lean on the horn until the light turned green, annoying the hell out of whoever was in front of us. One guy got so mad that when the light did turn, he drove off very slow. He slowed so much that Richard ended up smacking into him. It was unintentional of course. But I'm sure the guy was at the end of his rope. The two of them got out. And he said, "You hit me." Richard responded with, "Well you stopped, right in the middle of the road!" Since the cars were going about 2 MPH, there was no damage.

One day we were driving north on Lincoln Avenue, in Two Rivers. We were playing this game where I would hang out of the passenger side window, pretending to be dead. Richard saw a woman walking south, on my side. He screeched to a halt in front of her, grabbed me and pulled me back in, then pointed at the woman and screamed, "You didn't see nothin'!" We thought it was funny.

Every Friday night, Richard, Dave and myself would get together, drive around Manitowoc and Two Rivers, and generally be obnoxious. Boys will be boys. But in early October a new person was added. That person was Dave's older sister Kelly - Roncalli, class of 1986. Kelly was cool. Richard and I both took a fancy to her. Of course she was way out of our league. But that didn't stop some petty jealousy to rear its ugly head. When Kelly was around, I saw a new side of Richard - possessiveness. Kelly had to ride shotgun while Richard drove. Richard always had to be next to her wherever we went. It was so silly. She was our friend. But she had no romantic interest in either of us. I understood that. I'm not sure Richard ever did. I wasn't about to try and step on Richard's toes. In regards to her, I let him have his way. Eventually it buried him in her eyes.

Kelly joined us every Friday night on our weekly drives. She even hung out with us on her birthday, in March. But Richard's possessiveness towards her was wearing thin. And she'd had enough. The day after her birthday, she told Dave that she was never riding with us again. She'd had enough of Richard. And she never did. At one point I mockingly told her, "You're mine now." We both laughed.

Nintendo was really big at that time. And I would occasionally go over to Dave's house during the week. We'd play for hours. But we both knew that we couldn't tell Richard about my visits. Because if he knew, he would be insanely jealous that I could be potentially spending some time with Kelly. Truth be told, Kelly wasn't always there. One time I accidentally mentioned to Richard that I'd been at Dave's the night before. He got mad until I told him that Kelly hadn't been there. His affection for her was blatantly obvious.

The future was writing itself. Richard and I were growing apart, as Dave and I were growing closer.

Life in school remained the same. Richard and I shared a pathology class taught by Richard's father. For reasons unknown, we kept a running tally of every question Mr. Wheeler asked, and who answered it. We gave nicknames to everyone in the small class. Craig Rysticken was "pussy." Jennifer Kern (class of 1988) was "the animal." Jennifer kicked ass. But because she missed the last several days of class due to graduation stuff, Richard actually caught her. I finished close to the bottom - ahead of fellow graduate Brian Belongia, but behind class of 1988's Londa Bleeker.

We also shared gym class together that year. Each semester was divided into three sections. Both of us loved badminton. And we were very good at it. We would lose on purpose to our opponents, then spend the rest of the class playing each other. Just for fun one day, when we played the team of Brandon Podhola and Mark Schreiber, we let them get ahead 20-0, then played for real, coming back to tie it 20-20, before losing the last point on purpose.

We also had bowling in gym class. For that, we had to go down to the local bowling alley. Richard and I had fun there. Sometimes we would try to throw the ball as hard and fast as we possibly could. Other times we would tap the ball, and see how long it took for it to get down the alley. It always got there - except once. I tapped it so slowly once, that the damn ball actually came to a complete stop halfway down the alley. The guy who worked there was so furious! He started cussing up a storm, as he spread his legs, hopping down the alley, both feet in each gutter. That was a sight to see.

At the end of the year, we had baseball. Neither one of us wanted to participate. So we ripped our gym outfits and claimed that we didn't have them any longer. After two or three days of sitting out, Mr. Bonino was so mad that he took us to Mr. Wood's office. Bonino gave us an "F" for baseball. Mr. Wood put us into study hall. We were happy.

Richard and I shined in our first semester creative writing class - taught by Ms. Sapa. Both of us were excellent writers. But we also had a love of violence and anything shocking. Our creative writing packets were peppered with references to death, Charles Manson, satanism, vomit, and just about anything vile that you could think of. Richard once wrote a great poem about masterbation - something about being in a state of bliss, as he gave the paper a milky kiss. Was it gross at times? Sure. But for the most part, the writing was good too. Our packets were routinely passed around in class, as our fellow classmates loved to read our work.

One day in homeroom, Wyatt Wood told us that some kid was talking to a friend of his, complaining that there were these "two losers" in a class of his that would spend the entire hour talking about Charles Manson and death. The guy went on and on about how annoying these two kids were. It didn't take long to figure out that the complainer was class of 1988's Paul Streubel. And of course he was talking about us. We had Paul in our creative writing class. In that class, we were looked highly upon by our peers. While Paul was a virtual mute, with no friends. We were mad. And we were out for blood. We held the upper hand. In that class, we were popular. Paul was not.

That day, we walked into class. Richard walked right up to Paul, waved his pencil in his face, and yelled, "I don't like you!" Paul mumbled back, "The feeling's mutual." From that moment on, we made it a point to make his life a living hell. No one else really cared for Paul either. So he was all alone to suffer the mental abuse we constantly flung his way. We enlisted Jeremy Karman (who sat near Paul) to write down every single thing that came out of Paul's mouth. Paul wasn't very vocal. So it wasn't too hard. Then we would take those quotes and loudly celebrate them. "It was exactly two weeks ago today that Paul said..." I'm sure Paul dreaded coming to that class each day. We would mockingly say hi to him everytime we saw him in the hall. We would drive by his house and scream things. We annoyed him every chance we got. In time we eventually let up. Oddly enough, Paul even drove me home from school once!

Early in the year, Richard and I somehow came up with a scheme to participate in a double suicide. It was more intended to aid us in writing material for creative writing class. We picked the date of Wednesday, December 9, 1987, at exactly 10:30 in the morning. We never had any intention of offing ourselves. It was just a joke between the two of us. The problem was, we told a few people about it. And we did write about it. So those who read our work learned of it.

Our suicide took a life of its own.

You have to undertstand that suicide was a real touchy subject at our school. During our freshman year, at least three students had tried to kill themselves. One was successful. As a freshman, I had entertained the idea (more than once) of killing myself. I had even spoken to the guidance officer, Mr. Boehlke about it.

Well, being who we were, Richard and I thrived on the attention. And we never let up. We were writing and talking about it all the time. Even with Dave and Kelly, we were always a bit hazy on our actual intentions. Were we serious? Or was it a joke? As the date approached, we would joke about it even more. If an assignment were given, with a due date after the fateful day, we would look at each other, laugh, and say, "We don't have to do it."

The week of the mock suicide was a strange one. Mr. Boehlke had pulled us into his office, and said that five teachers and dozens of students had come in to inform them of our alleged plans. Mr. Wheeler found out about it when he heard that we had made out our wills in Ms. Sapa's class. He knew we were full of crap. He told us that we'd had our fun, and to just stop it.

But we couldn't help ourselves. We just kept going. We had both planned to play sick that day and put the school officials in a tizzy. At one point we actually did dicuss doing it. We thought it would be the ultimate black eye upon the school. Imagine two kids who bragged for months that they were going to kill themselves on a certain date, and nothing was done to prevent it. But our plans hit a major snag on December 8th, when Mr. Boehlke took it upon himself to call my mom at work, and tell her what was going on. He explained to her in no uncertain terms that I absolutely HAD to show up in school the next day.

So we showed up. Mr. Boehlke made a point to peek his head into our homeroom, in order to verify that we were indeed there. And life went on. Although it was all stupid fun, I discovered that I'd really hurt fellow graduate Erin Hynek. If memory serves, Erin had made her phone number available during our freshman year, for anyone who wanted to talk about depression or suicide. So she was obviously disturbed by our antics. About a week prior to the date, she went up to Richard and asked him, "You're not really going along with Burt on this plan are you?" Richard showed her no mercy. He responded, "Are you kidding? This was all my idea!" He said that Erin turned and walked away, dejected and upset. A few days after the date had passed, I had the opportunity to read Erin's creative writing packet for that week. It was devoted to our suicide plan. Reading Erin's words were like a shot in the head. She was clearly hurt and upset by our trivial joke. And I felt like total shit. I didn't even have the balls to apologize to her for it. But years later, I finally got the opportunity.

Somtime that winter, I was at Richard's house. And he showed me something in his room. He had five or six giant pickel jars under his bed. They were filled. With what you ask? PISS! What the living hell was that all about? Apparently Richard enjoyed hanging out in his bedroom watching TV. So when he had to go, rather than get up and go to the bathroom, he simply whipped it out and went in the jar. Now I have nothing against lazy people. Hell, I'm the king of laziness. But Christ! Even I'm not THAT lazy! Richard brushed it off like it was no big deal. As open and honest as Richard was about everything, this little tidbit is one story that he would never admit to publically. He'd say to me, "Don't tell them that!" But alas, it's true. And I love it! Thankfully, there were no boxes of shit.

In the second semester that year, we had a speech class with new teacher, Ms. Neveau. Ms. Neveau was really cool. And she and Richard actually became friends, even spending their lunch time together. It was kind of odd. Richard even spent some time hanging out with her at her home, watching movies. A few rumors began to circulate that they were having an affair. Richard was content with people believing that. Ms. Neveau was mortified. Obviously nothing ever happened between the two of them.

As the end of the year approached, so did our friendship. After school, on the last Friday of May was a good time. Memorial Day weekend had arrived - a three day weekend. Richard and I had plans to drive down to Milwaukee that night to go to a triple feature with Meff, at the outdoor theater. "Rambo III" was one of the films. Well, I was at home when the phone rang. It was Dave. Apparently his mom had missed me, and asked Dave to invite me along to go up to their cottage with them that weekend. I asked Dave if he was inviting just me (and not Richard.) He said yes. I asked him when he was leaving. And he said I had two choices. I could either drive up that evening with him and Kelly. Or I could drive up with just him on Saturday, as he had to come back to work for a few hours. Perfect! I told him I'd go up on Saturday, as Richard and I were going to Milwaukee that night. The date was set.

Moments later, Richard called. He was mad. He was going to be unable to get his parents' car. So our trip to Milwaukee was cancelled. That sucked. I'd really been looking forward to going too. Since my plans were cancelled, I called Dave back and told him that I'd drive up with them that night. At the time, I was spending 5:00-6:00 taping Star Trek off of channel 32 everyday. That was later than they wanted to go. But they relented, and said they would be in my driveway at 6:00, ready to go.

About 5:55, I was all packed and ready to go. Dave and Kelly were on their way over. Then the phone rang. Richard belted out, "Pack yer bags. We're going!" My jaw dropped. Richard had somehow gotten use of the car back. And he was ready to come pick me up. I didn't know what to do. Dave and Kelly had already altered their plans to cater to me. And they were literally on their way over. I couldn't cancel those plans now. Richard could tell that something was wrong. There was no excitement in my voice. He asked, "You still want to go, don't you?" I said yes. He said, "Ok, I'm on my way."

If I told Richard not to come because I'd made other plans, he would have been pissed. And when I told him where I was going, he would have been even more pissed, in addition to insanely jealous. I took the coward's way out. I didn't tell him anything. Either way he was going to be royally pissed off and jealous. I simply chose to delay facing him for 3.5 days. Richard came over and encountered my parents, who told him where I had gone.

Richard went on to Milwaukee alone. According to Meff, he spent the entire evening screaming about me. He was very, very mad.

Because my mom had to work In Manitowoc by 8:00, she would drop me off at school around 7:30. I was often the first person to school each day. I was always the first person in homeroom. On that Tuesday after Memorial Day, I figured I'd get to school, put my head down and fall asleep, then deal with Richard when he got there. Richard always arrived at 8:00, sometimes a minute or two later, everyday. But on that day, Richard was there, and waiting for me. I was dreading the confrontation.

RICHARD: "Where were you?"

ME: "Well, you know where I was, right?"

RICHARD: "Well, you could have told me."

The mood was very tense. But that's all that was said. We basically forgot about the incident and never spoke of it again. And we more-or-less got on with our lives, business as usual. But clearly, some major damage had been done. The school year ended with Dave and I hanging out with each other more - along with the addition of Scott Jaklin, who had formed a friendship with me near the end of the year.

A few weeks after school had ended, Richard, Meff and I hung out together one last time. My parents were out of town for the weekend. They both came over. We smoked pot and dropped acid. I giggled my way through the night, listening to some awful Bob Dylan country album that skipped for hours. If I ever hear the song "Peggy Day" again, I'll probably split my wrists. Meff walked home to his grandparents house around 6:00 A.M. I woke up a few hours later, threw up in the toilet, watched "Super Password" with Richard, then sent him home. That was the last time Richard and I ever spoke.

The beginning of senior year found us in a different homeroom that Mr. Wheeler's. Instead, we were on the ground floor, in Mr. Witting's class. I took a seat away from Richard. We never made eye contact the entire year. I've always wondered what would have happened, had we had Mr. Wheeler's class for homeroom again. We'd sat next to each other everyday for three years. Inevitably, we would have sat next to each other once again. But it wasn't to be. 21 months of friendship had come to an end. We weren't enemies. But we weren't on speaking terms either. We simply coexited. See my January 11th post for some post-high school news about Richard.

Richard was my best friend in high school. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss him sometimes. He was funny, and had a very quick, intelligent wit. We had an awful lot of fun together. Overall, high school was not a fun time for me at all. But hanging out with Richard sure was.

UPDATE - 11/13/06 On Saturday, August 12th, 2006, Kevin Dehne and I took our second trip to Two Rivers. We stopped by Richard's parents' house, in an effort to see Mr. Wheeler. But he wasn't home. But we spoke with Richard's mom for awhile. She remembered me, having been friends with Richard. She gave us the scoop on what Richard is doing today. She also said that Mr. Wheeler should be home any minute. But he was late. We had to get going. But before we left, I made sure to tell her to tell Mr. Wheeler that I did NOT steal his final exam at the end of freshman year! She said she would tell him. She also said that she'd tell Richard about the blog. Lastly, I asked if she had a recent picture of Richard. We each zoomed in with our digital cameras and snapped the pictures you see below. Richard looks pretty much the same.