David Stories

I need to collect these here so that I don’t forget them all.

Kerri Long reminded me this morning of the time in 3rd or 4th grade when David got in trouble at lunch for pretending to snort powdered sugar off his piece of cake. I think he got a paddling, and had to write an essay on the dangers of drugs.

I think it was at Crawdad Days or some other festive occasion at the square, David, Laura Brightwell and I actually managed to win a firehose tug of war. There was a prize of some kind but we never got it. I only just now realized that my cohorts were both children of firemen. Perhaps our performance was not so meritorious after all.

Sleepovers at David’s meant sandwiches at Coursey’s next door. Free chips and sodas, too. Most of my early memories of David smell like smoked meats.

I heard License to Ill by the Beastie Boys for the first time at David’s house.

In 2004, I remember going out on David’s boat. The water on the river turned out to be really low, so David had to get out and push. Here’s a picture. And just to embarrass him more, another.

I think it’s fitting that Paul Newman has now passed away. David reminds me a lot of Newman in Cool Hand Luke: the most likely guy to eat fifty eggs for no other reason than fifty seemed like a nice round number.

6 thoughts on “David Stories”

  1. My David memory…One Easter we had an egg hunt at the Presbytarian church. Afterwards, David, Ian Canzler and I were going through our loot and for laughs I cracked one of the hard-boiled eggs on my forehead. We all laughed and then Ian did it too, but his egg wasn’t hard-boiled. David and I died laughing while Ian sat with egg running down his face.

  2. I remember in 7th grade that some sort of “personal image” day was sponsored by Junior Axillary, I believe. It covered grooming, nutrition, proper diet, drug avoidance, etc. Anyway … I remember that they did a raffle for a “make-over” (essentially a hair cut). David was male winner. I can’t recall anything specific about his reaction aside from being a usual ham. He did return later to the group with a nice haircut, spiky with a liberal amount of gel.

    Perhaps this will jog someone else’e memory.

  3. My David memory really isn’t a pleasant one for me, but I am going to tell it anyway. I believe it was 2nd grade at Skyline Heights. We were all out on the playground on the metal thing I called a spider. David had this green hand on a stick and was chasing all the girls with it. I was scared of him. I thought he was crazy..lol.. it is funny now, but to a 2nd grader, it was scary! Might have been 1st grade, but I want to say 2nd grade.. *I was terrified as a little kid!

  4. Dave was our neighbor in college. We went to NACC and our house was known to have a few parties. One Saturday night we scheduled one of these parties and I don’t remember if I was sick or sad about something but I didn’t feel like being around everyone. Being the social butterfly Dave was, I assumed he would be right in the mix of everyone but he knew I didn’t feel like being around any one so he let me hang out at his house and he kept me company. We laughed so hard as we watched out the window when the cops showed up (because they always did) and the underagers scattered.

  5. I went with Dave to Branson for him to get a tribal armband tattoo. (nearly 10 yrs ago). He drove with his knee the whole time and for no reason. He was just a master at no hands driving. I was amazed. We were neighbors and he was great to have around back in college. After college we would see each other randomly and he was my loan guy. He was amazing at his job. The last time I saw him was at my house warming/ Christmas party last year. He came from Little Rock to Branson. It was a dinner party and he brought Sonic and scarfed it down and gave us crap the whole time while we set up. When he had to leave, I really wished he could stay. He was one of those guys that you really enjoy hanging out with. The next day I found tons of his business cards hidden through out my house in strange places.

  6. My David memory-
    Emily ( Aura to me) has been and continues to be my dearest and oldest friend.
    The first time I met ( over the phone that is) He thought he was talking to Emily and he had just proposed to her at the airport making her miss her flight to come and visit. Seriously dude – propose when she gets home! Once she made it here we were buried in bridal magazines, all over my kitchen table Laughing and looking at pictures of them.
    I picked up her phone when he called right then- this is what I heard-
    ” Baby I am so happy, do you know I look F******G awesome in a tux- better than James Dean” I don’t think he took a breath and went on and on about how fantastic they would look and how awesome a day it would be (like for 4 minutes) – Finally I said “David Honey, this is Dawn , you can stop talking now”
    I heard ” Hey Dawn whats up?” He didn’t miss a beat.

    I loved his laugh and smile, that he could dish it out and take it, the way he pretended to flip out when he heard how much Emily’s chi iron cost, and when he stole my fake ponytail and wore it all over the house.
    I love that he drove to three video stores looking for Napoleon Dynamite so we could watch it when I visited. We watched it twice that night ( Emily gave up after the first time though) and we laughed a ton and played whacked out one hit wonders music. I miss him-even though they were so far away I always felt close. More than anything I loved the way Aura looked at him and how she could exhale around him. I loved him for loving her so much. I love how he threw Cooper in the air and they both giggled-even though I screamed at him about the supposed dangers of baby tossing.
    I hate that he is gone.

Comments are closed.