How Do You Want To Die?

First, a short intro of those involved.

Chief: He was the guy at our school that always found a way to get every person sitting in the stands at the football/basketball games pumped up for the matchup with some crazy idea he concocted. Usually, it involved him running onto the field or the court dressed in Native American attire.

Norm: He was the big guy of the group. And seeing how the kid could drink a case of beer by himself on any given night, besides Sundays, we named him after George Wendt’s character on Cheers.

Rodeo: His real name stared with an R, and since he actually rode in rodeo’s, the rest of the guys just picked an easy name for him.

Cowboy: Like Rodeo, he too rode in rodeos. But since his name started with a C, we gave him the name Cowboy. *On a side note, the two of ‘em were good. They both made it out to Wyoming for the National High School Cowboy Rodeo Association finals in ‘95 and ‘96.

Cookie: Cookie was, obviously, the guy who cooked our meals over the camp fire on every trip. He was also the guy who always played it off like he was getting laid every day. Which we all knew was a lie.

And there were ten more of us, but this is how I remember the story.

When we were younger, my buddies and I did all the regular country boy things: Campin’...fishin'...huntin'...fightin’...farmers daughters...Church on Sundays...never swore around Mom...stuck up for each other...protected our sisters from guys just like us and drank ridiculous amounts of ice cold Busch Light. From the can of course.

Those nights we’d spend campin’ on the back 40 of Chief’s farm were always good times. Fifteen buddies drinkin’, singin’ and tellin’ lies. And it always seemed that sometime after the moon had peaked and all those tiny balls of gas lit up the countryside, somebody would get serious. It was usually Chief.

One night in particular, as we passed the bottle of shine from the 55-gallon drum that Norm's Uncle Willie Bubba brought up with him from Texas, Chief asked us how we’d like to die. None of us said a single word. We hadn't even thought about how we’d like to die. We were 17-year-old kids, we were nowhere close to dyin'.

And then Chief fired off his future death plan.

“I want to die savin' somebody. If it’s a kid in a burnin' house...a woman that's bein' robbed by some guy with a gun...crashin’ my car chasin' the guy who just robbed my house...whatever, I just wanna go out like that. Tryin' to set things straight.”

No words were said.

“Well", murmured Cowboy through a mouth full of Copenhagen, "I guess I’d want to die ridin’. Some big bitch of a bull, never been rode, and I get ‘em. Then he gets me. That’s how I wanna go.”

“I’m gonna say in a blaze of glory too. I’d wanna to save somebody, somethin’ or take the place of the woman I love.” Rodeo told us.

A shot at trying to break the seriousness of the moment shared between us, Cookie added, “I wanna die fuckin’. Me, the whole volleyball team and Miss Anderson. That’s how I wanna go.”

Norm summed up his way to go with one, simple word, “Quick,” which we all understood to be somewhat of a joke, but not really. Norm raced cars ya see, and by him saying "quick", we all understood he meant on the track.

And the rest of us all said that we didn’t know how we wanted it to end. And for many years after, I still didn’t know how I wanted to leave. Who really thinks about shit like that? But now, a few weeks after my 32nd birthday, I'm pretty I wanna go out like this:

Quietly, in a log cabin, in the hills of Colorado...as the mornin' sun begins to peak its face from behind the trees...with the echo’s of lost love...that fresh smell of an early mornin' rain on the fallen pine cones...the soft ramblin' of a creek tricklin' over stone...with the cry of an Eagle above...alone, tearless, expectant and ready...with my fingers on the keyboard, a cup of hot coffee at my side and the slow lingerin' smoke of a Marlboro Light in my eye...knowin'...

that I’m goin' home.