My Dearest and Most Beloved Sons,
This is a love story. A story of love, friendship, devotion, of loyalty, and of life. Its also a story of betrayal, deceit, dishonesty, and death. It involves friends, lovers, family, babies, and many, many pizzas, hundreds of pounds of tortellini, and gallons of ice cream. It's a match made in heaven. It's a scandal in a small town. I tell this story through tears of joy and happiness and through tears of deep, deep sorrow and pain. The sweet, happy parts are extremely sweet and happy, but the dark parts are extremely sour and will just leave a really bad taste in your mouth and on your mind.
1998 was the year I turned sixteen years old. I remember that year as being the year that I met Bradley Harrell at UTM Honor Band on the balcony of the University Lodge in Martin, Tennessee. Its the year I started driving myself to piano lessons on Tuesday afternoons, the year I became drum major of the marching band. I also had a rather obsessive crush on a hairy young man who played the tuba in our band - his nickname was Boo Boo.
I also met David Sanders that summer at band camp; he was a freshman trumpet player, I was a junior drum major.
I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on Bradley. He was wearing baggy jeans with a collared polo shirt tucked in - and with a belt. Always with a belt. He had his Halls High School gold and black letter jacket on. But it was his hair that I noticed the most... he had the thickest helmet hair I think I'd ever seen. He struck me. It absolutely was NOT love at first sight..., but he looked so different from the boys I went to school with. He looked put together. He looked intelligent. And he was always at the honor bands. Later on that same month we were in the All West Tennessee Red Band together. Aside from another clarinet player I knew from Huntingdon, TN, he was the only person I knew. We talked alot during breaks from rehearsal and when the weekend was over, I was sad to say goodbye to him, even though I knew we lived literally 4 miles apart, and I could get in touch with him if I wanted to I guess.
A few months later, band camp began in July for the 1998 band season. I met David on the field one very hot summer day. He asked me about a friend of mine that he wanted to date..., as much of a date that a freshman boy could take a junior girl out on. That's how we became friends - he wanted to date Christie - my best friend. I began to talk to David a lot about her. He's tall, and that summer, had bleach blonde hair and the biggest, goofiest looking smile I had ever seen on a boy. Christie really didn't want to have much to do with him, but somehow through all of that, David and I became very close friends.
By the end of band camp, I had landed my first boyfriend, Chris. It was very hard for me to believe that anyone would want to date me, because even though I knew I was awesome, I really didn't see myself as being a girl a guy would want to date. I'm pretty festively plump, that is. But I enjoyed having his company and we had a great first year together. I'll never forget some of our most fun times. He was my first everything.
In the spring of 1999 the Ripley High School marching band and the Halls high school marching band made plans to go to Orlando, Florida to march together in a Disney World parade. What fun we had preparing for this trip! I was one of two drum majors for our band, and Bradley was one of two drum majors for the Halls band. This finally gave me an opportunity to get to know Bradley even more. The four drum majors met a few times outside of school to work on our routine we would do for "Malaguena," the piece the band was playing in the parade. I really began to sense something about Brad - but I for the life of me just thought it was the need to be friends with him. I was attracted to him, but certainly not sexually - just attracted.
I remember one specific night after we had had a rehearsal at school that evening, I went home and looked up Bradley's home phone number in the phone book! I know it hard to imagine this now, dear children, but there WAS a time when teenagers did not have cell phones and you had to look up numbers in a little yellow book filled with recycled paper for pages. I can remember that very act so clearly... sitting on my queen sized bed, in my bedroom at the Asbury house. My royal blue walls made the room look so dark... but I had it all fixed with my blue lava lamp and all my picture frames all around me... and my piano over by the bathroom door. I got Bradley on the phone. I called him first and we talked until midnight, as best as I can remember.
I was still dating Chris when we went to Florida. There is a red journal somewhere that I have a complete account of the Florida trip in. You can read it when you turn 50. Bradley's entire family chaperoned the Florida trip, but I was so wrapped up in Chris, I really didn't notice him. According to Brad, he had already begun to develop a crush on me at that point and sort of stalked me the whole trip. I didn't notice. David also went on that trip, but neither Brad nor I had much contact with him. He ran with his own circle.
Bradley graduated a month later in May of 1999 and went to a local community college on a full orchestra scholarship as a music major. I sort of always kept in touch with him through a good friend of mine who played in the community college's orchestra with Brad. I would send him notes through her, and she would return notes to me from him. Kind of like email... only through hands. Funny.
I kept thinking that whole year, "I wonder why Bradley went to that community college. He's SO intelligent and SO smart..." But it was more of a financial situation I believe. His parents literally had NOTHING to give him as far as money to get his education. He had scholarships for the first two years, but then took out loans for the rest of the three degrees he earned. (More about that later.)
So that's how we met.
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