archives

‘My name is Crabby Appleton,
I’m rotten to the core
I do a bad deed every day,
and sometimes three or four.
I can’t stand fun for anyone,
I think good deeds are sappy,
I laugh with glee, it pleases me,
when everyone’s unhappy!’

Everyone knows someone that fits this description. The song is from the old “Captain Kangaroo Show,” sung by the villain on the Tom Terrific cartoons.

The e-mail subject this morning read "Sad News." The words it contained were worse.

Wendy Masonek, a fellow high school student who inadvertently catapulted me into journalism, had died.

People my age, in their mid-20s, aren't supposed to die.

The obituary in my hometown newspaper didn't say what she died from, though I'm fairly sure it was related to a disease she had that kept her liver from working right, leaving her skin slightly jaundiced and her body weak. She was a cheerleader with my sister in a Pop Warner league, and went to the same high school as I did. She played drums, and one time we got together in her living room and rocked out.