morbid entry...sorry
I was at the Theta Nu pledge retreat last night...and I got home this morning to an IM from Lexie that said, "Callie, I have some bad news. Paul Price was killed today."
Let me begin by saying that I haven't been friends with or hung out with Paul in years. It's definitely been at least four years since I even talked to him. However, when I was best friends with Lindsey Anderson in elementary school, she and I used to hang out with her brother Jared and his best friend, Paul. We would build forts, go sledding, go exploring in our neighborhood, and go trick-or-treating together every year. I heard he went down a really rough road when he went away to college, but since then, he had moved back to his house here in Westerville, and was about two quarters away from graduating from Ohio State with a nursing degree. It really seemed like he was getting his life back on track.
So, apparently on Friday night, Paul was at a bar down on OSU's campus and some guys started talking shit about him, so he said some shit back. Paul was one of those kind of cocky guys who probably thought, "Oh, I can take these guys. They're not gonna mess with me." So (and here is where it gets a little controversial), he was leaving and the guys followed him out to the parking lot. I don't know exactly what happened, but I think one of the guys reached to grab him and Paul fell backward and cracked his head on the pavement. I've also heard that the guys beat him up and hit him in the head, or that one of the guys shoved him and he fell. Either way, he fractured his skull, went on life support, and since he was showing no brain activity, his parents took him off the life support yesterday.
This really proved to me how short and unpredictable life really is. One minute, Paul had hopes and dreams and plans for his life...the next, he says the wrong thing to the wrong person and ends up never getting to fulfill them. We'll never know what might have been, what he might have done with his life. Please don't take living for granted...and please keep the Price family in your prayers. I know they're going to need it...especially throughout the next week.