The level of meaningless crap you have to deal with is way lower on this side. It’s like the number one thing that I would recommend about dying — okay, I don’t recommend dying, you know, obviously, but you do have a couple of things to look forward to about it, so you’re like, “Oh, it isn’t all sad.”

Probably you think you’ll miss everything about being alive, because if it’s part of being alive, then it’s automatically good. Like those people that have near-death experiences, and they’re like, “Oh, now that I have a second chance at life, I’m going to stop and smell the roses.” But that’s not really a good example, because think about it — why wouldn’t you stop and smell the roses? Roses smell good, they’re pretty — there is actually a decent reason to stop and smell them if you’re not running late or something.

But now that I can look back on my whole life, which, yes, was sort of short, but still? I’m not going around all, “If I had it to do over again, I would take the time to stop and smell the homeroom.” And if anyone’s going to be like that, wishing they could do any part of it over, it’s me. “Oh, if I could only go back and sit around totally bored for forty-seven minutes, watching Fiona Nussbaum flipping her hair around like she’s obviously the hottest thing who ever graced the earth with her presence, oh please just one more time.” No, not really feeling the need to repeat that experience.

I do think back to homeroom sometimes, not all wistfully or anything, but in terms of how maybe I wouldn’t have bothered with it at all. Not that you need to die to have some grand revelation about homeroom. You live in the world, you already understand the essential pointlessness of homeroom. You go to homeroom anyway, so you don’t get in trouble, and if you don’t get in trouble, you go to a good school and you get a good job and blah blah, I guess. But if you had it to do over — your whole life, or just the last day, whatever. Would you go to homeroom? No way.

And you don’t know, and you don’t get it to do over, but in my opinion that’s even more reason to start, like, an uprising. Why doesn’t anyone just grab their bag and say, “Look, Mr. Beauchamp, no offense, I don’t totally hate your U.S. History section, but I could die tomorrow and I won’t get this forty-seven minutes back, so I’m going to go dick around in the parking lot and get some sun”?

It’s like — it’s like that girl I knew who died in gym class in eighth grade, Tanya Carver. I didn’t hang out with her more than a few times a year, because she didn’t go to our school, but she was friends with my best friend, and whenever we hung out, she was really cool and fun — she was one of those people, you know, most of your friends are your friends partly because you’ve put all that time in with them, but some people, you don’t see them for a while and then you can just pick up where you left off. She was like that.

Anyway, apparently Tanya had some defect in her heart that nobody knew about, and one day she’s running laps in gym class, and she feels weird, so she sits down to rest, and then she — just died, sitting there on the tumbling mats while everyone else is still running around. I heard the gym teacher yelled at her like three times, you know, “LET’S GO, CARVER!” and then she figured out what was going on, and she felt so guilty that she quit and moved to Iowa or something. But I also heard that Mrs. Carver saw the teacher at the funeral and was like, “You — YOU KILLED MY DAUGHTER!” and I know that didn’t happen because Mara, my best friend, was there, so maybe the Iowa thing isn’t true.

I just remember thinking, after it happened…I couldn’t really get a grip on the fact that I knew her personally and she was dead. It just made no sense. I saw her reel off a string of cartwheels on the playground at Veterans Field, like, three months before that. She didn’t even get dizzy. And then she dies? In gym class?

I just thought, what was the point of that? Beyond a thirteen-year-old dying, even — she died in gym class. There’s just so much wrong with that from a philosophical, like, meaning-of-life standpoint that it’s almost funny. The indignities of junior high could kill you! It’s just ridiculously stupid. And I thought, if she had known, and it’s obviously better that she didn’t, because, fuck, if you know you’re going to die in fourth period gym, why get out of bed, ever, but if she had known…I mean, who knows, maybe she went to heaven, or a heaven-y place, and she doesn’t sit around like we do here and wonder about things. She’s got a cloud and she’s all set, or maybe there’s just nothing, which I guess is also good, as long as she’s not actively unhappy. But maybe she is like me, here, which means she’s got the rest of time to be like, “Why, why didn’t I just cut gym? Why didn’t I just let Seth Stropp kiss me that time at camp instead of elbowing him in the head?”

Sure, at the time Mara and I were like, good for you, Seth Stropp is nasty, but if I had it to do over again…why not just kiss the guy. At least you’ll know what kissing is like, before you die.

But on the other hand…she elbowed him in the head. In the head! She wanted that first kiss over with, too, but when it came down to having it with Seth Stropp, she threw him an elbow instead of settling. I made her tell that story like five times, it was so awesome. And she’ll always have that — that she did the hard thing. I wish I had something like that, that I’d done my Declaration of Homeroom Independence or something, because that’s what I really wanted, was for something to change, or reset the system somehow. I wanted to do something big and, like, trade in all the little bullshit dramas for one big cleansing drama. Which is so dumb, I know, especially saying it now, but I honestly didn’t think I was actually going to die.

I had a, like, cinematic vision of the whole thing — the bathroom door gets broken down, lots of weeping and wailing, the ambulance comes, blah blah blah, then I lie in bed for a few days looking all wan. But hot, at the same time. Yeah, barf — believe me, I know. But then like a retard I calculated a bunch of things wrong, my brother got home later than he usually did — I just fucked it up. I didn’t think of that ahead of time, and man, when I say I fucked it up — I mean, my parents, and Brian, Brian did have to break the door down in the end, and now it’s like, “Why did I fucking do that?” No, I wasn’t supposed to die, quote unquote, but even if I hadn’t died — why did I do that?

If I had it to do over again — well, duh. But I don’t know how much good it would do to have that second chance anyway. You’re still the same person. If you’re a person who would never have cut homeroom, you’ll still go. If you’re a person who would have elbowed a dork-ass in the head if he tried to kiss you, you’ll do it again. If you’re a person who never thought things through enough, you’ll be as stupid as you were before. You’ll still be living in the world, so when you think about, what’s changed? Why fuck things up again?

My name is Jen Dovacek. I died of an overdose October 26, 1995.

June 30, 2003

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