Twelve Years

   Today a good friend, Terry, posted a picture in memory of another good friend, Chris Whited, who passed away five years ago. The last time I saw Chris was Christmas day, 2002 at Disneyland. I was in line for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, with my friends Mike and Kate, when I saw him. He was about a dozen people in front of us and I yelled out, "Whitey!" It came out involuntarily and you wouldn't believe the looks I got from everyone in line, one apparently just doesn't yell "Whitey!" in a crowd. I think people thought someone was trying to start a race riot. Chris looked around, bewildered, saw me and smiled. We hadn't seen each other in a few years, he introduced me to his fiancée and we caught up as the line snaked back and forth. We said goodbye when he entered the building for the ride.
   I met Chris in the summer of 1986. I was a few days into my short career as a fry-cook at McDonald's in Atascadero when one of the managers asked me if I knew Chris because he was into punk-rock, too. I said I didn't, I went to high school in Morro Bay (just one of the fun things about living in the middle of nowhere, school was 10 miles to the east and work was 10 miles to the west). The manager said I should meet him, he was a cool guy. It would be a few more weeks before we met, he worked days and I worked nights, but we eventually crossed paths. For the next five years, if we weren't at work (unless we were working together) or school, we were hanging out. He was a record collector and I remember we spent many Saturdays sitting in his room listening to all the new stuff he got. To this day there are certain bands that, whenever I hear them, bring me back to that room. When I went to the (Black) Flag reunion show last year all I could think was how much Whitey would've loved it.
   We played Uno with his parents. We spent a year where we would go the movies almost every Friday. I saw Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure with him. We also saw Mystic Pizza, we thought it was going to be about a space pizza delivery place, we learned to read reviews before seeing a movie. He introduced me to some great people, Terry being one. We drove up to the Bay Area countless times where I met his buddy Ace and went to 924 Gilman Street. I got to see a ton of great bands there, including Green Day (still my favorite pop-punk of all time). We were housemates for a year, I don't remember much, that was the year we turned 21. When he moved out, my girlfriend and I got a place of our own and he moved to San Luis Obispo, one town away, into a (I swear to God) haunted house with a group of our friends. We still saw each other at the community college and I partied at his new place, but we slowly drifted apart, life got in the way.
   When I moved to San Francisco Chris would come visit either me or our buddy Scott, who also was living in The City. One time he picked me up from work and, in the ten minutes between parking, getting me and us walking back to his car it had gotten broken into. Someone smashed a window and stole his backpack. We went to my apartment to hang out, but he was so depressed by the break-in that he had to leave before we had a chance to really hang out. I would see him one last time before I moved out of SF and back home to San Luis Obispo. Scott called me up one day and said Whitey was coming over, we should all hang out. The three of us drank beers on the roof of Scott's apartment. It still is one of my favorite memories of the six years I lived in The City.
   It would be five years until I saw him again, December 25, 2002, at the Happiest Place On Earth.

RIP Chris Whited