In a message dated 03/30/2000 4:00:57 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Don't go there bud!!!  A publishing psychologist I used to read a lot
 espoused a principle that has worked well for me.  When you find that an
 association has more negatives than positives, it is time to move away from
 it.  That goes for avoiding that kind of association, too. >>

Tom,

Not to worry. A friend of my son's, an exceptionally bright kid with a lot of
promise -- and a hard road to realize it, a few years back was going around
wearing a key on a string around his neck. It did not occur to anyone in
particular that it meant anything special. It was a symbol of affinity with
Kurt Cobain, the Nirvana (?) guy that committed suicide. The bright kid had
to deal about a year before with a younger neighbor boy, a friend of his,
that somehow got tangled up in the wheel well of a county bus, in front of
their respective houses, and was killed after the bus dragged him for 20
feet. All this happened while the mothers were in the front yard talking. A
problem I see with this kind of scene is that no politician thinks about
providing trauma counseling because it is a singular incident and not a mass
action violence. So, some time later the bright kid gets in trouble for spray
painting a swastika in the dirt on the school grounds. Knowing the bright kid
I believe this was not in any way an anti-semitic act, but a further
exploration of death symbolism. Tell that to the school system. I was
concerned. The bright kid and I got into sharing a few e-mail poem messages
that explored the connection between life, symbol and death. Not exactly my
favorite preoccupation, but art transforms symbolism through masking. End
result appears to be that years later the bright kid works 70 hour weeks in a
local deli, recently got not accepted by MIT (their loss), spends his
*leisure* hacking, loves to write code, and wants to buy his own server.

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