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Entry for 09/14/2004 @ 10:30 P.M.
I apologize to any that found my last post a little coarse. Sorry. I really wanted to get something up but as I was writing I just got to thinking about things in general and got all depressed.
I was up late last night. Sundance was kind of moping around after our walk, so I left him alone. It's probably because of my mood on Sunday night, but even dogs need their space, right?
So, after an hour of hunting through my closet, I found a shoe box where I keep stuff from Walter in. Some pictures. The few letters that I got before I lost contact with him. A bit of a journal I was keeping in high school.
Now that I am older I wonder if it was really fair for us make these “monsters”. Is the world ready for them? Is the world safe for them? Are they safe for the world? They didn't ask to be “born”. They already lived one life, is it fair to ask them to live another? These things have been bugging me for quite some time and I am still no closer to the answer.
A couple of months ago, Jerry and I were out at a bar. We hadn't seen each other in a while. He lives, with his wife, on the north side of Chicago. I have an apartment in the suburbs. We try to get together at least once a month, but we had both been really busy with work. Anyway we had had a few beers and for fun, one of us ( I don't remember which) suggested that we do a shot. Well, three shots of tequila later (no training wheels, please) we were both feeling pretty good. Neither of us really gave any thought to the fact that Kathy ( Jerry's wife) was going to be meeting up with us in an hour or so. We were just having fun. We started talking about Walter and Chauncey.
It hadn't come up in quite a while. I am not sure how much Jerry thinks about it anymore. So I posed the question, do you regret what we did? “What?” he asked. I just sat there, slack-jawed from the booze. He raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and took another sip of beer.
“Giving them life. Bringing them into this world.”
“Reanimating them?” he asked.
“Whatever you want to call it, but yes, in a nutshell, reanimating them.”
“Oh,” he said. “ At first I thought you meant sending them to the sanctuary.”
I guess, until that point, I had not really given that consideration as a separate issue. Bringing them to life, the time we had spent with them, sending them off to the sanctuary, it had all been one thing in my mind.
Jerry went on. He said that he didn't really regret reanimating them. It had been fun. He probably should have made sure that Chauncey's brain was a little better kept before we finished putting them together, but that was about it. We'd had some great times, the four us. The two of them had had a few adventures on their own, as well. Jerry had been saddest about having to give them up to the sanctuary in the first place. He hadn't wanted to let go. Chauncey hadn't taken the split too well either. He was depressed all of the time and wouldn't talk much (even though he talked little to begin with, it was different). After a while, Jerry had settled into college and not really worried about it. Now he was married and his wife had no idea about Chauncey and Walter. What he regretted most was the first day of dropping them off. Sometimes he found himself thinking about Chauncey's face, how he looked like a dog that you are boarding, but more so since this was going to be permanent. That day and the first few months of not keeping in touch as much as he probably should have.
I am still not sure. Even as we sat talking about it that night I couldn't work it out. Did I regret the whole thing or just that I had no idea where Walter was? So, the product of that night's conversation is now before you. Jerry new that I had been searching for an idea so that I could put up a website and start learning web programming, so he suggested that I start a blog. Go ahead, he said. Put together a site about our Frankenstein monsters. Most of the people on the net are full of crap anyway, so people will thing you're making it up. Who cares!! The important thing is that we do something to remember them by.
So here you go. This site and this journal. A memorial to our friends and a quest to figure it out. The problem is, even if we find the answer, I am not sure we even have a clue as to the question.
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