"I said, 'Nobody's ever escaped Alcatraz. It's too cold in San Francisco Bay.'"

Disclaimer: I jotted down the following notes yesterday during some downtime at work while I had to "babysit" attorneys from another firm. Essentially, someone needs to be in the room as they go through our documents so that we can say for certain nothing was removed. I was thinking about my upcoming applications to law school and started to scribble notes about possible topics, and all of a sudden out popped the following. I don't know if others' recollections differ from mine, but this is how I remember the events. I'm also going to change most names just so that an internet search won't potentially pull anything up. Chances are, if you're from my hometown, you'll know who the involved parties are. I've typed the notes up practically verbatum (used real names while I was initially writing), so I apologize for any inconsistencies, etc. It's from my stream-of-consciousness, which is actually more like the Mighty Mississippi at a point where it has lots of sources entering at all angles and places.

Tucker died June 27, 1993. He was thirteen years old. He was shot in the back of his head by his best friend, Mark.

Whenever someone young dies, media attention is full of clips and snippets saying how sweet and innocent the child was. I'm sure Tucker was both of those things, but he was also quite scary to me. At thirteen, he smoked and cursed, and there was a rumor around school that his girlfriend was pregnant. I was afraid of her, too. She was always yelling in the halls and pushing girls into lockers. I didn't know Tucker at all because our classes never overlapped until seventh-grade Geography. He would frequently stroll into class late (when he showed up) and throw a carton of cigarettes down on his desk. He tested the limits by moving his desk next to Mr. Buckley's. I was floored by this ability to do what he wanted, and this flaunting of power scared the ever-living daylight out of me.

Twelve years have passed since his death--almost as many years as he was alive--and when I look back at the pictures of him in the middle school yearbook, all I can see in a young kid grinning away, incapable of causing harm to anything--a sweet and innocent child.

Mark had found his father's gun somewhere in the house. If I knew the details at one point in time, I've since forgotten them. One thing I do remember is that the gun was not locked away and that it had been issued by my town. His father was a cop.

My best friend called me around 7 PM to tell me that Tucker had been shot and that she was scared. Mark lived near her, and she thought he might be running around the neighborhood waving the gun, looking to shoot anyone who stepped into his path. We talked about how ironic (though I doubt we knew that word at that pre-Alanis Morissette time) it was that he would now be a "vegetable," no different from the Special Education kids he used to make fun of. It never occurred to us that he wouldn't survive.

We were both so positive that Mark was on the loose; looking back now, I can only begin to imagine his fright. Here he was, thirteen years old, having just shot and killed his closest friend in the world. What must have happened? Did he call 911? Were others home? Did he cry? Did he laugh from shock? Did he think about turning the gun on himself? As time went on, he must have grieved--but I doubt he would have attended the funeral. If he had legally been able to do so, he would not have been socially. In the church, all eyes would have been on him at some point, and--if they weren't--he would have felt that way. How does one even begin to face the world again after something so horrific--even if it's an accident?

As soon as I got off the phone, my dad took me to the library to take out some books, CDs, and the Beatles's Help on VHS. The last day of seventh grade was the next day, and my summer day camp had started that day--an overlap caused by the large number of snow days that previous winter. My efforts to lobby my parents to let me go to the first day of camp and then the last day of school had been unsuccessful. Sometime around the time when I was deciding between two CDs of sound effects, Tucker took his last breath.

I don't remember how or when I heard the news that he was gone. It was sometime before I arrived at school the next morning because I wasn't surprised by the news vans and cameras ringing the school.

Most of that day at school is gone from my memory. I didn't have Geography. Some kid yelled, "I didn't pull the trigger, Man. I didn't pull the trigger!" in the hall, and he quickly found himself plastered against a locker by a sixth grader of whom I was afraid--a guy who later escorted a lesbian friend to the senior formal and wound up making out with one of my best friends at my house. There may have been an assembly--I can't imagine there wouldn't have been--but I don't remember it.

I had planned my last-day-of-school slumber party for weeks or maybe months, so it went on as scheduled. We took more than two hours to set up Becky's tent in my backyard and sang karaoke. We watched the evening news, and Erin's butt was plastered across the screen as she got on the school bus to head home for the day.

Later that summer, I went to sleepaway camp on the Cape. During a sing-along or something else similar, one of the counselors broke down. She had gotten a call earlier that day that one of her best friends had died. It may have been in a car accident. I'm really not sure. Pretty soon we were all crying for lives lost in innocence. Andrea's best friend died of lukemia in second grade. One of Elizabeth's friends had been shot in Central Park by a stray bullet that someone shot straight up into the air and randomly happened to hit him on the way down. We all hugged, cried, lit candles, felt self-important. A group of the lines in the play I've been ushering at for the past few weeks is [not verbatum], "'I cried out of self-pity.' 'You called it lost-innocence then.' 'Except that we were never that innocent to begin with.'"

The shooting was an accident. Mark didn't know the gun was loaded. Neither thought he could die.

There has been a lot of debate over the years--most notably after the horrific events at Columbine High School in Colorado--about the influence of violence in the media, if playing video games and watching semiautomatics leveling towns in the movies affect the way that children interact with each other. Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Confessions of an Evil Stepsister, spoke to one of my lecture courses in college about his requirements when he visits elementary schools. When the kids hand him stories and look for his approval, he instantly marks out any acts of violence and asks why they happen. He requires that remorse be shown in all situations of violence, no matter how short or small.

I can't help but think this is a good idea. Violence will continue to happen, no matter what is or is not shown on television. Testosterone, aggression, and conflict will see to this. We need to teach our children that just because a gun is lying around doesn't mean that it's not loaded. Just because it doesn't seem like there's a bullet in it doesn't mean it can't kill someone.

My long-term plan in life is to start a movie production company. Any movie that gets the go-ahead from my company will insist on that second of reaction to violence--used only when necessary. Before any gun is shot, there will be anything from a flicker of hesitation in the actor's eye to a flat-out voice-over or comment about it. And there will always be remorse, pain at the loss of life.

In Cloak & Dagger, Jack Flack encourages Davey to shoot "the bad guys" before they shoot him because they plan to kill him. Davey says, "I don't want to play anymore!" Jack responds, "Shoot them, Davey. This isn't a game. This is real life. It's what you've always wanted--like "Cloak & Dagger" but for real!"

It's never really a game.