Bruce Johnson is dead. I just found out through a series of coincidences. Today in the mail I received a letter inviting me to a high school class reunion. My class had a reunion last year and had so much fun they decided to do it again this year.
Included with the letter were some links to video of last years reunion and some photos but also a power point memorializing those classmates now passed on. As I watched the presentation, about half the names were known to me. Not that they had died, but I remembered the people. A couple of them I was close to and knew about: Ken Hood and Karen Gudat. Ken was a neighborhood guy that I hung with for a while. His sister and my sister are close so I had heard of his death. I may write about Karen one day.
The presentation went on for a while. Most had pictures from the high school yearbook so they were easy to recognize. There must have been 30 or 40 pictures and as it went on I started thinking about Bruce and wondering if he would be in there.
He was. At the very end.
It makes me think of the times in PE when we were picked last for the teams – usually flag football, in my recollection. He called it ‘little or no ego satisfaction.’ Another nod to Frank Zappa.
it also makes me think of how he was not valued by the teachers and leadership at Cupertino High School. They saw him as a lazy under achiever, a dope smoker who would never amount to anything. Whatever Bruce turned out to be in conventional terms, he was a huge influence to the good for me and I loved him.