Dennis Was Nice To Everyone.
I lived in a small town for 4.5 years of my childhood. I would say I grew up there, even though I went to three different schools and lived in three different houses during that time.
Middle school was hard for me. I was a quiet kid with maybe one friend. I didn’t have enough confidence in myself to speak up when someone shoved me down. So at the end of seventh grade when I heard we were buying our first house – no longer renting, and therefore staying! – I finally considered coming out of my shell.
We only moved to the other side of town. I made a handful of friends in my new neighborhood, and felt liked by peers for the first time ever. I went to East Middle with that handful of friends in my pocket, and practically smiled when people said hello.
In social studies class, assigned seating put me next to a boy named Dennis Jones. I was the new girl, and he was the class clown. Dennis was nice to everyone. The first time he saw me, he smiled and said a genuine but simple, “Hey there!” His smile was contagious.
Dennis was drop-dead gorgeous with white-blonde hair swooping over sparkling green eyes, and he spoke to me as if I were human. He joked about my being quiet, but he treated me like a friend. Dennis stormed past my shyness and made me feel okay. For me, “okay” was the best I’d ever felt.
We had a student teacher who had no idea how to discipline a group of eighth graders. Every day, Dennis would come up with a new way to agitate the teacher, and he looped me into the daily games. We would all drop our pencils at the same time, or individually clear our throats, or just sit and smile and stare at her. The teacher once slammed a yardstick onto a desk and snapped it in half – her face beet red, her voice hoarse from screaming.
As a current teacher, I know that this was horribly unfair. But as a student, it was the most fun I ever had – and I was sitting right next to the superstar instigator, playing my part. While he was never more than an acquaintance, Dennis made me feel accepted.
After only four months in that school, we moved again. I asked Dennis if I could take his picture since I wouldn’t be getting a yearbook. He quickly posed a group of kids for my photo album. I looked through the viewfinder at those sparkling green eyes and could barely take the shot. He was breathtakingly beautiful.
When I joined Facebook, Dennis is the only person I “friended” from 8th grade. Dennis grew up to be a frontman for Everybody Wants Some, a Van Halen tribute band. He made a perfect David Lee Roth. I had a couple of opportunities to see the band play, but I decided to wait until the kids got a little older. And then the kids got older, and I got older, and Dennis got older. I never saw his band.
Last week, a notification on Facebook said simply, “Dennis Jones passed away.” He’d had a massive stroke at 57. It’s an unfathomable tragedy. Dennis was the life of the party for 50 years; the sympathy is still pouring in.
For me, though, Dennis was the one who made me feel “part of” a world that, I believed, didn’t want me. He made everybody feel like they belonged; it was just him. Rest in peace, Dennis.