The Death Of Someone You Dislike

I made many new friends my first week of college. The guy in the room across the hall from me seemed nice enough. He was gregarious, friendly, and I introduced him to Lost (this was back when the show was good and hadn't yet broken my heart). We were cool.

 

Also during that first week, my grandfather gave me a laptop. I liked that laptop. It was the first really high-end piece of gadgetry that I ever owned.

 

Now, come the third week of college, this guy and I are finishing up the first season of Lost in my room. Michael screams "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT," I tell him it gets even better and lend him the second season box set. Then we bid one another good night, he goes to his room, and I go take a shower before turning in. I don't lock my room because, really, why would I?

 

In retrospect, it's a good thing that I don't notice that my laptop is missing when I come back from the shower. There probably would have been a pretty ugly situation. At any rate, I don't see that it's gone until the next morning. Now, I'm not a naturally suspicious or confrontational person, so I decide to just knock on the guy's door all nicely and see if he can help me. Only he's not there. I get the RA, and we go into his room. Laptop isn't there. Turns out he's gone into Chicago (about an hour away from where I went to school).

 

So to cut a long, ugly story short, he gets kicked out and the school pays for my new laptop. I never actually saw that guy again, except for a brief moment when he was moving his stuff out.

 

Around a year and a half later, my friends and I are lounging around, reminiscing. I remind everyone about that dick who stole my laptop. Now, I had spent a semester studying in LA, so I missed this, but they all knew: he died of a meth overdose less than a year after getting kicked out.

 

My first reaction upon hearing this? I laugh. We all laugh. Not because we hate him so much that we're glad he's dead, but because it just makes sense. In retrospect, he was pretty fucked up, and I honestly have no idea how he got into that school and stayed around as long as he did. I really don't hold any burning grudge against him; I brought him up then because it had become a funny story. And I'm not happy to hear he's dead at all. It's tragic. But whenever we brought him up we'd laugh. Maybe it's the absurdity of it all. He's more than the guy who stole my laptop, he's "fuckin' [name witheld]." We look back on him fondly, the same as all the other kooky characters we encountered. And we laugh because his fate just seems so appropriate for how he acted.

While I didn't laugh, I get where you're coming from.  There was a guy I grew up with.  We were friends in elementary school, but then in middle school, he became the biggest dick ever, and started bullying a lot of kids.  I wasn't his primary target, although he did once try and push me down a staircase, from behind, and completely unprovoked.  I stumbled, jumped a few stairs, and then miraculously regained my balance.  Turned around to see him laughing his ass off.  I just flipped him off, called him an asshole, and then went on my way, despite the fact that I could have easily wound up in the hospital or worse.

 

His family moved away shortly thereafter, and he apparently proceeded to drop out of high school, have a few kids, do a stint in prison for armed robbery, and then eventually commit suicide in his early twenties.  When I learned all this, all I could muster was a shrug and a, "figures, guy was a jackass."  In retrospect, I feel like the real jackass, especially since he left kids behind, and he clearly had some major issues, but it doesn't change the fact that I felt nothing when he died.

I'd say laughing is a much better reaction to the news of someone you disliked dying than what some people do... turn around and act like the prick in question was their best friend. Oh boy that gets me.

Yeah, a sincere reaction, no matter what, is so much better than a fake one.

I knew a guy (who we'll call Taylor) since elementary school, who always went out of his way to act like an ass.  It started with just pushing people around, sucker punching them any chance he got, but moved to theft, drug dealing, and some serious violence as he got older.  He really knew how to pull some mind fucks on people.  Once we hit high school I was happy to be rid of him, though I still saw him from time to time when I visited friends who lived close to his place.  By the time I hit college I hadn't thought of Taylor in years, and to be honest it was probably for the best.

 

Then I found out that he'd died, and not just kicked it but murdered by some kid he had offered a lift.  I'm not sure why he was doing that, but apparently the kid was from his old neighborhood and was looking to rob someone that night.  He waited until Taylor pulled up to the first streetlight and blew him away.  A particularly gruesome way to go, no matter who you are.

 

Thing is, my reaction was very similar to yours.  I couldn't shake the memories of how terrible he'd been to just about everyone he knew, how he treated everyone like they weren't fit enough to lick his boot.  He was a dick, and I couldn't help but think karma was in some way getting him back for all the terrible things he'd done.  I knew it was terrible of me to think that, and a part of me still feels a stab of guilt whenever someone mentions his name, but I understand how it can be hard to separate what happened and what you should feel from who the person was and what they did--whether it happened to you or someone else.

This. While it's to your credit that you feel bad about how you reacted, the fact remains that you didn't like the guy. It can only be so much of a bummer. I'd say the laugh was you simply processing the guy's death as a concept - 'That prick died? get out of here!' - and then when the weight of it all hit you, that's when it felt bad. That's completely fine - I think we have the same reaction to the death of anyone we know, there's that few seconds where it's an abstract concept we can't fully take in, and how we respond is usually determined by our feelings about the person. It wasn't callous, it was just an instinctive reaction. At least it was devoid of bullshit, which is a credit to you.

I still don't know if I disliked 'B'. He was aggressive and confrontational, with a drinking problem at the very least. He never followed through on promises and never repaid debts. He was also tremendously charismatic, blessed with a classic sense of style and an encyclopedic knowledge of movies and music. He knew everybody, and knew whom to introduce to whom.

 

When his wife divorced him for blowing all their money, I ended up on her side of things and only saw him a couple of times after. Last August his housemate found him dead-- of what precise cause we still don't know-- and the massive outpouring of love from family and friends (yes, even his ex-wife) kind of took me by surprise. At his funeral his sister asked me to be a pallbearer and I accepted, privately feeling that I didn't deserve the honor, that I hadn't liked him THAT much, hadn't been THAT good a friend.

When I was 15 or so, me and a friend were accosted by 4 kids we went to school with. Knew them all, had no prior issues with them, but they were out looking for trouble. Serious trouble, with weapons. I truly feared for my life. Fortunately, we were able to get away, and called the cops and gave them the names. Over the next few weeks, we did what we could to clean up the situation. Still, nothing would ever make me feel better about how scared I was that night.

I found out a few years ago that one of those 4 kids died at age 27. No idea how, and, since he was only a year younger than me, he had died a few years before I found out. My first reaction?

Rot in hell, cocksucker.

I get that people, especially kids, make mistakes. But it's no lapse in judgement when you set out to physically hurt someone, and make them fear for their life.

There are far too many worthless pieces of shit in this world, and the sooner they are gone, the better.

I had a moment not directly, but similar to what's being described here, and I've been wondering how awful this makes me:

 

My younger brother comes over to my place the other night. We're hanging out, he pulls out his phone to check Facebook, and sees a bunch of his friends posting about a guy that he went to high school, who died in a car wreck. This is how the immediate conversation took place:

 

Brother: Wow. That's so unreal. I...I don't even know what to say to that.

 

Me: Did you know him very well?

 

Brother: Yeah. We had Media Tech together. He was kind of my nemesis.

 

Me: Well, I guess you say that you won.

 

And I immediately felt like an asshole. Even if it was the darkest of dark humor, and it did do the trick and break the sudden mood in the room, I've been a little "Really? I'm really that fucked that I just made that joke without even having to think about it?" And that's weird for me.

You're under no obligation to feel bad about some random person dying. If, in your opinion, they were also shitty you may even express joy. It says nothing bad about you. If the extend of your thoughts about someone while they were alive was "Go the fuck away asshole!" why should you turn them around and be all remorseful when they finally do go the fuck away?

 

There was this asshole friend of my father's when I was growing up. He was pretty nice to me but he really fucked his poor kids up. You could just see them turning shittier and shittier with time. He definitely beat them and his wife and I suspected even worse. When he got lung cancer and died my only reaction was regret that he didn't die sooner so his damage would have been minimized. My mother on the other hand went all "Oh, the poor man!" even if she disliked the hell out of him. We actually got into an argument about it. Didn't feel a moment's remorse about my feelings.

What stelios said. Shitty people die all the time, good people die all the time, we all die all the time.

All life is precious, you bastards!

 

Last year, a guy I didn't know died, but he abused his power to sexually assault a friend of mine. I didn't feel bad briefly celebrating his death at all. #coolstorybro

"It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor - they are all equal now"

To my knowledge, no one I've ever had an intense dislike for has ever died, which means I've wasted a fucking ton of money on voodoo dolls over the years.

 

 

I'm The Rain Dog and I endorse this statement.

Last summer, I found out that I woman I'd dated a few years ago had recently died of cancer. We'd had an on-again, off-again relationship, and she was the only woman (to date) who's dumped me on two separate holidays: The 4th of July and Thanksgiving. The second time we broke up was because I objected to her recreational cocaine use. I know, I was CLEARLY in the wrong. At any rate, I felt plenty of resentment towards her. She was a single mom, and I thought she was destined to become a junkie.

 

After I learned that she'd died, I Googled her name and found her old MySpace page. I reasoned that since she was deceased, I could cyber-stalk her. I read the blogs and comments and pieced together the full story. She'd met someone shortly after breaking it off with me and later discovered she had cancer. Her condition seemed to be improving, then it worsened. Even though she was sick and uncertain about how successful her treatments would be, she and her boyfriend got married. Not long after, she was hospitalized. She soon slipped into unconsciousness and later died.

 

I felt very bad. She'd straightened herself out, found some measure of happiness with someone and then passed away at a very young age. She was only 39. Had we not broken up, I would've had to go through the whole drama of her cancer fight with her. I wasn't sure if I should feel better or worse about having avoided that entirely.

Don't feel anything about it, it's just the way things worked out.

Each of us will get to taste death, no exceptions. I never rejoice when ANY man ascends. I just remain silent.-- Sister Souljah

I went to school with this guy who was nice to everyone else, except me and a friend of mine. He stole my friend's jacket and pissed on it, tormenting us in the hallways and classrooms, and all the usual shit. He got kicked out of school because he punched a teacher. A few years later I ended up working with his mom at a restaurant. When she didn't show up one day, my boss called and was informed that her son ran his dad's truck into a light pole, walked home, cut his wrists then shot himself. When my boss came out and told us the news, I laughed. I felt bad about his mom, who was a good person, but her son was a shithead. I got a writeup for laughing, but to this day I think that he got what was coming to him.

Damn...I saw this thread and just thought, 'Bongwater'...

Edited because yeesh, that was ugly.

 

 

Edited by MichaelM - 2/8/12 at 6:23am

When I was a teen I was working in a pizza shop one summer. Some dudes were grabbing on a girl in front of the shop and I knew these guys. I yelled for help 'cause there were usually a bunch of guys working but nobody heard me. I jumped the counter to help. Needless to say the girl was ok but I got my face beat in by three guys and I really only thought there were two honestly.The guy who witnesses say stomped on my face when I was down was this guy I went to school with. He was kind of a dick and mean motherfucker in general. I ended up in the hospital for a few days but everything was good after. A few years after this I heard the guy died from someone putting anti-freeze in his beer when he was already fucked up. They never did catch whoever poisoned him (not me I swear) but the dude was not very popular so I don't think the police looked really hard. I was happy the cocksucker died and I was even happier when I learned it wasn't pleasant. This makes me a horrible person I guess. To me some people just invite being K-I-L-T and they just fuck with the person who will eventually do it. Too bad not so very sad.

Well, just now I learned of Andrew Breitbart's death. Cracked an involuntary smile. *shrug*

I learned about Breitbart, and headed for this thread.

Me too. Somehow I knew it would have already come up. Good riddance to bad rubbish. My smile is quite voluntary. 

I'm guessing he died of Karma.

Would you consider my wish for Limbaugh to follow him soon to be evil?

Wow, the Obama election campaign is really pulling out all the stops this time around.

 

Goodbye to a cunt of man who made it his sole purpose in life giving credibility to societal fearmongering, greed, & the destruction of the American middle class.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/people-who-think-president-obama-killed-andrew-bre

Well, he did have Osama killed. How difficult would getting rid of Breitbart really be?

"BEHAVE YOURSELF!  BEHAVE YOURSELF!  STOP DYING!  STOP DYING!"

Oooh, Breitbart truthers! Carrying on the Breitbart tradition of unrepentant paranoia & verbose idiocy! They are all no doubt posting these messages using anally smuggled iPhones from their Obamacare internment camps/Mosques.

 

It... it just keeps going.

Don't be silly, Bush killed Osama.

AHAHAHAHA!

 

If you want to lose all faith in humanity search twitter: Breitbart Obama

 

No matter what Buzzfeed might tell you, there are many more than 25 people that think the president had him killed.

They have no idea how correct they are.

 

This isn't exactly the same thing, but my grandfather (on my mother's side) recently passed away, and I found myself struggling with the fact that I didn't feel anything AT ALL.  I saw him once a year until I was about 15 or so, then barely saw him at all during the last 15 years.  His death had no emotional impact on me whatsoever... in fact, I feel worse (although in an abstract, intellectual sort of way) that I don't feel bad, than I do because a family member died.

Well, it's not as if you're celebrating it. We're so ingrained to believe because someone is a family member that we must feel certain things about them, including great sadness at their passing, but if you didn't really have a connection with him, then what are you gonna do? I guess you can just try to be there for those who do feel sad, but you feel what you feel.

No sense pretending your reaction was something it wasn't.  You now know yourself a little better .. .maybe a lot better.

 

If you don't like this aspect of yourself, then recognize that you'll have to work hard  to identify and change the mind-set that led to your being able to laugh at another human being's tragic death.  There are lots of unpleasant people in this world, but do they deserve to die?  Whatever roads his life may have led him down, they will now go untraveled.  Was he such an abhorrent individual that his end deserves mockery?  This doesn't sound like a case of black comedy ... sounds like you were truly happy about his passing. 

 

The question isn't "how should I have felt," the question is "are you happy with the kind of person your reaction has shown you to be?"

I was picked on by a select group of 4-5 kids from early middle school to about 11th grade, and over that last summer I discovered Metal, grew my hair long, and finally came to the realization that HS was shit, and I was going off to college and leaving all these numbnuts behind.  One of them even tried to fuck with me on honors day (where the honor students, which I was one of, sat in the middle of the gym and they handed out a bunch of awards, blah blah blah) and came over and told me I was in his seat--I literally told him that he was too stupid to be sitting where I was.  Now make no mistake, I still have a lot of friends that I grew up with throughout school, and the friends vastly outnumbered the assholes, which is probably one reason I made it through pretty mentally unscarred.

 

After I started college, about every 12-18 months on a random trip back home, my mom would say, "Did you know so-and-so?  He died in a car accident last week."  To a person, 3 of the 5 guys that always picked on me died this way.  1 of the 5 was crippled in a motorcycle accident where he hit a stump and fell face first into one of those things you pull behind a tractor to plant seeds and got brain damaged for life.  The last guy gained about 100-150 pounds, still has a mullet, literally digs ditches for a living and last I heard was on his 3rd marriage.  To each and every one of these incidents, I responded, "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."

 

Moral:  Don't fuck with me and Karma.