two more crazy ones from me .
I volunteered coaching baseball and travel baseball for 12 years . I had a core of about 15 boys , including my son . We finished a baseball tournament that was out of town , the following wednesday , I get a call from one of the moms . She advises me that her son Joey " probably won't be able to make the next tourney , as their dad just commited suicide " . I was speechless . The dad was a well known community leader , with three boys , several homes etc... The team went to his funeral , where the mom spoke in detail about her husbands infidelity , and how he shot himself in the head with a 30/06 and all three boys found him like that after school . The youngest boy was 5 .

A neighbor boy , one of the older kids that my son and daughter used to play with ( group of 8 kids ) and they had known for their entire lives goes off to UCSB for his first year of college . He goes to a friday night party in a well known area of that school for drinking , drugs etc.... He is walking down a street to go home with his friend and their girlfriends . Some older guy yells an obscenity at the girls , the other boy says something back --- two older guys come towards them --- they assume it was my neighbor ( he was 6'4" ) that said something back . One of the older guys throws a sucker punch , hitting my neighbor kid in the jaw , knocking him backwards against the street curb hitting the back of his upper neck , severing his spinal column just below his head -- died within the hour

Both deaths occured in the same year -- it was like a dark cloud over all of us .

Yikes! Some kind of bad stuff!

There is one I can share that happened last year. There is a young man that I work with and I asked him how he'd been (I hadn't seen him in months and nobody knew why, just that he'd taken a leave of absence). He told me some vague answer and I made the comment, 'Don't make me call your momma'...He looked at me and started getting a little teary eyed and told me that was gonna be a tall order, even for me. He went on to say his mom had died of Huntington's Disease and that's why he'd taken off for so long. I was the first person he told outside of his family. I apologized over and over again and he said it was fine because there was no way I could have known. I gave him a big ol' hug and his boss walked into the area and looked at me and I told him I couldn't tell him. It took another 3 months before the kid finally told people we worked with.

For those that don't know, Huntington's is hereditary and there is a 50/50 shot this kid has it and there's not a darn thing anyone can do. Because his mom was so young (her late 40's), I've been told the odds are increased that he and his sister have it.

This is a young man about 21 years old and just the hardest working, most genuine person you'd ever want to know. His momma did one heck of a job raising him and I pray he has not been inflicted with that horrid disease. We've become very close since then and I've taken on the role of a surrogate father figure, because his own father has never been in the picture. Rest of his family is in NJ...just him, his sister, and a longtime family friend live down here.

Again, be kind because you never know what anyone is going through.