Photographed above: Michelle and Carl
The moment that Michelle and Carl became endeared to me is still fresh in my mind. (Forgive me readers who have heard this story many times.) It was late at night, and Carl and Michelle came home from a night out. They were debating something. I don't I think ever caught what they were debating about. Michelle went to the computer in the front room to e-mail her father Joe, better known in the Andrews household as Papa Schulte. Carl went into the kitchen to cook something. Aaron and I sat in the room in the middle of the kitchen and the front room listening to them. Michelle started to say something to Carl to which he replied, "Zip It." Michelle called back, "I'm not zippin' ," and then continued on. Carl called back, "What ever, tell it to Joe." Michelle said that she would tell it to Joe and then went on only to have Carl tell her to zip it again. Then went around in circles like this for quite awhile while Aaron and I sat in the middle and laughed.
Carl loved surprising Michelle, and he often called Michelle on Friday nights saying that he had to work late and won't be there for hours. Two minutes later there would be a knock at the door, and it would be Carl who had called from outside the house. It wasn't long until all of us looked forward to Carl's coming to stay for the weekends almost as much as Michelle. Everything was just more exciting and funny with Carl around. He had a gift for bringing out the best in everyone around him. Those were the days when we stayed up late playing scrabble and Aaron and Carl would do the "Cactus Twist" for our amusement.
A few years after college, Kris and her husband Kijana built a house, and I had the opportunity to live with them. Michelle and Carl also moved in to Kris and Kijana's "boarding house". I have so many great memories from this period in my life: playing games every weekend,using Homie figurines as game pieces, playing cards, baking cookies, and lots of T.V. watching. There was nothing better than weekend games watching Carl and Michelle get competitive with each other over what ever game we were playing. I feel so lucky to have had this time with Carl. He and I would stay up late and watch David Letterman and The Daily Show. We loved talking about how Letterman made fun of G.W. Bush each night. Then there was Carnivale. OH the legend that was Carnivale. Carl and I loved that show to the chagrin of Kris and Michelle. We lived for Sunday nights to see what was going to happen. Then we analyzed the episode and what each element might have a hidden meaning. We talked for weeks about all of the secrets that would be revealed when the carnival reached Babylon. Of course nothing was revealed and there were only more questions.
Photographed Above: Carl and Kijana
I recall one Christmas night, everyone came over to my mom's house to hang out. Carl came out of the bathroom with a box of tissues. He wanted to know what kind of scam my mother was running. He went on to show the room that the tissues had someone's name written on it, and concluded that my mother was stealing the tissues that her students brought to school. For some reason, my mother is the only teacher I have ever met who has left over tissues at the end of the school year. What else is there to do with them than bring them home? Carl gave my mom a hard time about it, and when I went to Kris's for New Year's Eve, we wrapped up tissue boxes with students' names on them as a joke. The next Christmas night, Carl showed up with a gift for my mom. It was a box of tissues with his name written all over it written to look like a child's hand writing.
Photographed Above: Carl w/ Christmas Pinata Jesus. I brought all the way from North Carolina for Carl to smash. We noticed the strange resemblance.
Carl was one of those people who lived life. I mean really lived life. There are very few people who you can say make everyone they come in contact with smile, but Carl was one of those people. Everyone loved Carl, and Carl was everyone's friend. He has had such a positive effect on my life to the point that he changed how I look at the world. I was freaking out one night because I was having trouble scheduling to take the PRAXIS, a test you have to take to become a certified teacher, and if I didn't get scheduled for it, I wouldn't be able to start grad. school as I planned. All I could think of was all the ways this was going to screw up my life. Everyone else had gone to bed, and I told him my issues and how there was no way I would be able to calm down and get any sleep. He listened to me and then asked me if there was anything I could do about it that night. I told him no. "Then why worry about it when you can't do anything about it now?" he said. "In the morning make the calls you need to make, and worry about it then. It won't do you any good to worry now when you can't fix it." I realized that he was right. I have a tendency to worry about things I have no control over, but that night I went to bed and slept well. Ever since then I have tried to remind myself of what he said to me that night when I fret over things that I cannot control.
Carl reminded me to enjoy life and to not take the world so seriously. On my last day working at Target, a job I hated with every fiber of my being, he convinced me that I should just not go. Being the responsible, guilt ridden person that I am, I said that I couldn't possibly do that. He assured me that indeed I could, and called Target for me. He gave them some cock-n-bull story about how something had happened to me, and I had a concussion. We laughed, and I ate my chinese leftovers while he watch the OSU game on t.v.
I know that I've now missed out on so many grand experiences with Carl gone. We will all laugh and smile less as a result of his absence in our lives. Those who knew and loved Carl have lost so much that there are no words to describe the void. Sometimes when I think about losing Carl, I don't feel anything except a deep sadness, frustration, and anger that someone so full of life and joy could be taken from this world too soon. It makes me want to go up to those people who claim that every thing happens for a reason and that good comes from everything and scream, "What good could possibly come from loosing Carl? Nothing good will ever come from this!" A world without Carl reminds me that life isn't fair, and that horrible things happen arbitrarily. They hang in our memories without reason to attach to them. However, deep down I know that this is not the way to honor Carl's memory. Knowing Carl is to know that what Carl would want is for us to remember him with a smile and a humorous anecdote.
More and more these days, I can think of Carl and smile. Someone will say or do something that triggers a memory of those days on 10th Av. or at Kris and Kijana's, and I'll smile and say, "One time my friend Carl..." Just the other day, Karen and I were talking about something, and a memory of Carl came to me that I hadn't thought of in years. I went on to regale her about the time Carl and I watched the movie Bad Cop, and we noted each time that Harvey Keitel did something that made him a bad or good cop. I should mention that Carl was a film studies major.
I am so proud to be able to say that Carl isn't my friend's sister's boyfriend. Carl isn't my friend's boyfriend. Carl Berg is my friend. I am a better person to have known him, and I miss him everyday.
