I get two free days each week. Usually on at least one of them, I wake up feeling like no good will be done, but I fall asleep after completing some significant thing.
Other than that, it was my first time awake since a long nap that ended around 3 a.m., an instantly bad sleep schedule after getting at least seven hours for a week straight. But that was due to PTO. I took four days off, worked Sunday, and it was now Monday afternoon.
Dylan Lyons died on Wednesday. On the scene of a shooting, he was gunned down by the same person accused of killing the subject of that assignment. The shooter then went on to kill a 9-year-old girl.
Though several years younger than me, Dylan graduated years earlier. He was already on TV before I ever stepped foot in a real newsroom in any context other than a field trip. Before I was president of UCF’s Radio Television Digital News Association, I was its vice president under Cliff Tumetel, who was elected president after Dylan’s term. While I struggled to keep the club alive during the pandemic, memory serves that Dylan went across the country to the same conventions I missed in stress, spreading RTDNA@UCF’s influence as I had to concentrate it. I’ve known for a long time that he was better than me. The Nicholson School of Communication and Media and its esteemed educators have success stories. Dylan was one.
Dylan’s memorial was set up at the Nicholson School while I was otherwise busy. His vigil was also held during this time.
I read online that purple flowers in mourning signify feelings of admiration and respect. I bought a one-day parking pass for the university and left to buy a small arrangement after putting on my old school shoes, a pair of beaten, stained black Keds that I bought in 2017 after seeing an old drama instructor wearing them. There was no tread left, the old laces had been chewed through by a corgi Kiersten and I almost bought, it was brightened with splotches of plaster from a table I made for her when I was still in love; though riddled with old memories, they still fit me better than anything else I own.
It’s always hard bringing myself to do things like this, even when it concerns people I knew much better.
Everyone’s already come and gone from the memorial. I wondered if the students seeing me, then the flowers, then the flower pile, understood. I trust my old professors have let them know; I wondered what their private reactions were, but I instantly had to try to ignore the grief.
The daisies I bought were labeled “FILLER” from the store, to which another website agreed, but I bought them still. I was prepared to add them to other flowers in a vase, to cut the stems with a utility knife and add some of the plant food it came with. I brought water to top something off, but I had to just lay the flowers down in the end. Maybe there was a vase in there, I couldn’t tell. CNN memorabilia, his picture, a poster board — I thought that a bench would be near enough for me to sit on and contemplate Dylan, but someone was sitting where I wanted to, so I leaned against a wall.
I decided to round things off by getting lunch at an old favorite spot on campus. From where I was, Burger U was far enough away to give me the walk I wanted.
For more than a year, I thought the last time I was here would be the last time I was here, but not much has changed. Skateboarders thread through foot traffic, Classroom Building II was in great framing — as I looked up — with two flying jet planes and the moon.
Dylan was 24. Right now, I’m 27.
I haven’t done enough, and that was true when we were still both students here. But I didn’t feel that way back then, even though I should have. I would walk from Point A to B after parking late in as straight a line as I could draw. I walked past clubs, pottery sales, little art shows, demonstrations — all sorts of potential friends — and now I have the gall to feel nostalgic. Crossing Memory Mall, which had been freshly fertilized and cored, I imagined accepting the sting on my arms after hitting the ground during the improvised field games that I never joined. Even then, current students upwind were experiencing just that, making memories. Hence the name?
In 2014, I thought I discovered the concept of having to decide between making memories and recording them. It may not have been a coincidence, then, how I wrote less and less about myself as life went on. I’ve convinced myself at this point that I really just have memory issues, slowly getting worse — it could always be because I haven’t been writing, so I thought I should test it.
I could steal a pen, but I’d have to buy the paper for it. Bar napkins have helped in the past, but they can only go so far. Reaching a UCF bookstore, I actually almost talked myself out of the whole thing because I have enough unfinished notebooks at home, but there are those green essay packets all over, even in vending machines thankfully.
91 cents after tax. I paid with a dollar and asked the cashier if she had ever tried the Tony’s Chocolonely they sell, hoping to recommend the dark bars.
“No.”
Then, what kind of headphones she was wearing.
“I don’t know.”
Read the room. Nine cents in change. Of course a penny rolled across the floor.
I sat down at the bar ready to order my old usual thing: a double whiskey sour in a short glass and a burger with blue cheese and bacon. As strange as it feels to chase any solid food down with liquor, I’ve never had anything else here. The day had altogether become an emulsion of new and routine.
The bartender had a short conversation across the restaurant about a coworker’s last day before I could greet her.
“Can I steal a pen?”
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