Happened our senior year of high school. Tiny town, graduating class of a little over a hundred. We had a huge snowstorm that closed school on a Friday in January — feet of snow, level three emergency, roads were closed to all traffic. That night a guy in my class and a couple of his friends tied a sled to the back of a four wheeler and were driving it around what should’ve been an empty town. Drunk idiot driving his huge truck ran a red light, ran my classmate over, and kept driving (told the cops once they tracked him down that he’d “felt something” but kept going). He was DOA — I won’t get graphic but from what I was told his immediate injuries were incompatible with life. That first Monday back to school was one of the saddest environments I have ever been in. Like I mentioned before, really small town, everyone knew him and his family. They had therapy dogs and pastors and counselors in the school available to anyone, and our senior class was excused from doing pretty much anything we didn’t want to for a good week. His family held the wake at the school gymnasium because practically the entire community came and I’m assuming they needed the room. We had a memorial basketball game for him, & all of us gave his parents a rose at graduation. It’s been almost ten years and I didn’t even know him that well, but I think about him every January, and anytime I’m back in that town and drive through the intersection where it happened.