Bad Times

For my Editing American English 681 class, my final assignment is to create a semester-long lesson plan for a "teaching collegiate grammar" class of my own design.

Unit 6 is entitled "Writing at the Collegiate Level: MLA Style (or, how to write papers so that you don't look like an idiot to your professor)."

Yes, that's the actual title of the unit. We're allowed to have fun with this project, and boy am I going to.

The fact that I've gotten this far is the only good thing that's happened today. Well, no, that's not true, I'll take that back -- I did go to the discount grocery store this afternoon, I did put gas in the car and air in my tires, and I did mow the grass. But the bad far, far outweighed the good today. Big time.

I awoke this morning to find out that one of my friends from high school had been murdered.

No, that's not a joke. Murdered. In a Walmart parking lot. Shot to death by the father of her estranged, soon-to-be-divorced-from husband.

You know, words can't properly express how absolutely insane that is. You can read the news story here; it's all over the news back home. Her name was Shannon, and she was one of the sweetest girls I've ever known. I don't know any details more than what's in that news story. If asked, I would have considered her a friend, yes, but she and I hadn't been close and/or talked since, oh, sophomore year at WVU. So that was about seven or eight years ago. We weren't even friends on Facebook, as strange as that sounds. After a while, everyone I went to high school/college with tended to go their own ways, and she was just one of those folks that I eventually lost contact with (though not by anyone's fault, of course).

I've mentioned here many times that I didn't have a lot of close friends in high school. I just didn't. Most of my closest friendships were formed while in college, but in high school I had a lot of acquaintances and/or people who knew me fairly well. Shannon was one of those people, as we had midday homeroom/lunch together pretty much every year we were in high school. I knew her well enough to where she is one of the few people immortalized in my high school senior memory book, as she not only signed it and wrote me a long message, but I have one of her professionally-done studio senior pictures in the photo section, as well.

Of course, that was eleven years ago now. She was killed barely twelve hours ago.

Perhaps I'm just in shock more than anything else, but perhaps I'm a bit numb. Shannon was a wonderful girl; very smart, very sweet. Always there for me to talk to, and told me so when we were still in high school. I valued her friendship. The last time I saw her was probably around 2003 or so; she went to WVU for a while, but left the school for somewhere else, and that's the last I remember talking to her or seeing her on a regular basis. To read a gruesome news story about her getting shot to death in a Walmart parking lot just this morning is, for lack of a better term, fucking heartbreaking. You know, I've had friends who have died over the years in many ways -- car accidents, suicides, cancer...and yes, I do have another friend aside from Shannon who was murdered as well -- but she wasn't shot to death in a fucking parking lot on a routine weekend shopping trip. It's so tragic that I can't even wrap my head around it. Shannon had a young daughter, as well; she is now a daughter who will grow up without her mother, and a daughter whose grandfather murdered her mother. I can't even process that. I can't imagine, at all, what both families are going through. The most I can do is remember Shannon the way I always knew her all those years ago.

And Lady wonders why I am such a worrier. You worry about me too much, she tells me. I can take care of myself, you know. And she's right; Lady is a tough girl. She may be small, but damn is she athletic and muscular. When she's not here, however, Lady also is three hours away on her own college campus, and much farther away when she's at home with her family. It's not like I can stop myself from worrying about whether or not she's okay -- especially in the light of the sheer craziness of what happened to Shannon on a simple shopping trip. I'm not the overprotective type, but fuck, when one of my friends is murdered, I tend to be a little more on edge, you know?

Right now I just don't know what else to say about what happened. It's horrific and simply heartbreaking on so many levels. I simply know no other way to describe it.

[EDIT] Here's an update to the story.

[EDIT 2] Here are two more stories about Shannon, one of which has my friend Amber quoted extensively.