In memory of……………

A couple of days ago, I bumped into Jaarden, an old friend from skool on the train. We got started talking about peeps that we knew from back in the day, and somehow the conversation then led to people that had passed away. A couple of names came up, but the one name which I hadn’t heard in a long time was Martin. We both expressed our shock when he passed away, that day when the Principal came into my drama class and gave us the real drama.

It was weird because in a way we both knew him because he’d always catch the same train as us: the 8.06 slow train in the morning and the one from Beverly Hills back home. Martin, was a larrikin in that he’d always do something stupid that’d make you smile. I remember one morning when I was waiting for the train and he was already inside “Quick Jump in, Man”. Not knowing what to do, I jumped like Air Jordan into the carriage. Martin pulls out some rag from his pocket, proceeds to spray it with deodorant like its got bad B.O and lights it up, leaving a small bonfire on the platform. I could see that he’d been doing it from every station that he’d passed, but this was one of those stupid things that I remember about him.

In a way, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, I looked up to him. He was in the year above me, he was a clown, always made us laugh and never seemed to be rocking full school uniform. In fact there never was a day where I didn’t see him in his green/blue Adidas jacket and his sport shoes. Our school had pretty tight uniform regulations but since he had that “I don’t give a **** attitude” I was like cool, I’m gonna do that too and started wearing my Adidas jumper and black Nike Air shoes.

It’s so sad that someone died whilst so young. He musta been what, year 10? That makes him bout 15 or 16 years old. You think about all the things that he missed out on – going on to complete school, seeing his family, growing up, hanging out with friends, and still doing stupid stuff that’d make people laugh.

I feel bad in that there was this chick who was his friend from his area that also caught the train with us. After I found out he’d passed away, I still saw her on the train and wanted to break the bad news to her, but just couldn’t. She mighta known, she might not have, but I regret not speaking to her after that. It seemed like Martin was the only connecting thing between us, and when he was gone that link was gone.

In a weird de ja vu scenario, when I got home and had dinner that day after catching the train with Jaarden, my bro Will brought his name. Somehow Will had gone to a different school with Martin’s sister. But it was uncanny that his name had been brought up after all these years on the same day.

It seems that some names never die.

RIP Martin.

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