Month: November 2023

Carol’s text to the group came at 7:20 a.m. “Hi all. I just received a message from Pam’s brother that she passed away last night. I will post his message here shortly.” My heart fell out of my chest. I was immediately in tears. I’m stunned sitting here thinking about it now. I knew Pam was sick, having been in and out of the hospital over the last few months. It seems like I had just talked to her on the phone a couple of weeks beforehand, but it could have been a month. She was home then, but couldn’t get in and out of the car by herself. We made loose plans to go to Cap’s Pizza & Tap House a few days hence, a place she loved and that was close enough to her house that she could wheel herself there. We never made it. Our last texts were about two weeks before she died, continuing to try to make plans to go to Cap’s. Her last text to me was “Unfortunately I am still in prison.” My last text to her was “Oh no, I’m sorry” with a sad face emoji. Although she had been confined to a wheelchair for 35-40 years, prison was being in the hospital.

The story she told was that she had a softball game scheduled on the night of the crash, back in the 1980’s. A lifelong athlete and sports fanatic, Pam was frustrated with her women’s team that seemed to care more about looking cute and drinking than they did about competing. It was the last game of the season, and Pam had had enough. The playoffs were out of the picture, so she blew off the game and she and her fiancé drove to Reno. I can’t now remember if they were eloping, or just taking a short vacation. Regardless, the gentleman fell asleep at the wheel on the dark of the highway and crashed. Pam was thrown from the vehicle and her spine was broken. She would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. The fiancé, she said, did not stick around during her convalescence. He was uninjured. She was in her mid 20’s and paralyzed from the waist down. As I recall, she never saw nor spoke to the man again.

I met her decades later. My friends Jessica, Scott, Nick, and I were enjoying a beer at Device Taproom at Ice Blocks here in Midtown, Sacramento, sitting at one of the big outdoor picnic tables. We noticed the place start to fill up, which seemed odd for a Thursday. A woman asked if she and a couple of friends could sit at the other end of the table, as all others had been taken. We said sure, go ahead. The woman, around my age, and her friend, somewhat older and in a wheelchair, thanked us and sat down. The woman in the wheelchair had an adorable, friendly, Bichon Frise in tow on a leash. What’s this one’s name? “This is Posey,” replied the woman in the wheelchair, “After Buster Posey.” A man came by to give the women a couple of pieces of paper and a pen, and the first woman asked my group if we were playing trivia. We replied that we were not, that we were just leaving; they could have the whole table. But then I told the woman I’d always wanted to play pub trivia.

It was true. I’m not particularly skilled at trivia. I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of anything, and I don’t have an incredible memory. But I’m more or less engaged with the world. I read. I follow the news. I listen to music and watch movies and TV shows. I pay attention to some sports, and I graduated from college. So if I know something, I know it. Although I’m sometimes an organizer of events for friends, Trivia Night is something I never quite got around to. But it literally fell into my lap that fateful Thursday in April of 2021.

Carol introduced herself, then Pam did the same. Their other friend Jeremy showed up later, and the people I had been with previously made a quick exit, being about done with their beers. My friends that night – all in their early 30’s – and my other younger friends, they humor me: The old guy. I do believe they genuinely like me, but they were also in no hurry to join a trivia team with a bunch of people my age or older. I absolutely adore my younger friends. We have had countless incredible adventures together. They are all highly intelligent and very, very fine people. However, I’m apparently the one with the reputation of being an extrovert: the person who “likes people” and will talk to strangers and genuinely enjoy their company, sometimes trading Instagram handles or even phone numbers. They wanted no part of this. I bid my younger friends farewell and got down to business with my new teammates.

The details are hazy now, but I believe the foursome of Carol, Jeremy, Pam, and I were the only players on what would become our core team of six that night at Device Taproom. There were a lot of other teams though, maybe thirty or forty of them. It was old-school Trivia, played with a pen and paper, not some fancy smartphone app. The host, Josh, read the questions over a P.A. system that he dragged along with him, and we wrote down our answers on a score sheet. I can’t remember any of the questions that night, but it was an absolute blast. For a couple of questions I was the only one who knew the answer. For other questions it was one of my new teammates who knew. For the majority, though, we talked them out, rationalized them, reasoned, convinced each other and ourselves, changed our minds, and then came to a consensus. In April of 2021, Covid vaccinations had just started en masse here in the U.S., and the world was kinda sorta getting back to normal. It was more fun that I’d had in a while, and I’d had my share of fun before, during, and “after” Covid, if there is such a thing.

Carol, ever the coach, the organizer, scribbled something on the score sheet. The team name. “What does that say?” I asked. The Posinators. “The what?” Well, everyone on the team was a San Francisco Giants fan – fine with me, I’m an Oakland A’s fan who puts the Giants at number two – and Pam’s sweet little doggie was named Posey, therefore we were the Posinators. As in Posey-nators. Alrighty then. I thought it was a little silly, and I wasn’t sure the host would know how to pronounce it, but I was the new guy and I wasn’t going to make waves. I found out later this was the team’s first time at Device Ice Blocks, but they had played at other venues before that.

I don’t have a record of this life-changing, serendipitous occasion. I use a trivia notebook now. I bring the same one to each event, recording the date, players, and my insane notes. That night I used the pen and scratch paper that Josh handed out. I did not save my notes; I wish I had. Certainly the Smithsonian will be asking for them someday. But I do remember one very important detail about that night, the first night I ever played “real” trivia.

After manually grading thirty to forty score sheets, Josh announced that the results were in. He reread every question along with the correct answer while we took note of which ones we had gotten right, and which we had flubbed. After that, he read every single team name, from the worst to the best. I found out later that he invents a team name for the team that comes in last, so as not to completely humiliate anyone. I’m not sure if this is a standard trivia host practice or just something Josh came up with because he is a genuinely cool and nice dude.

“In last place, because someone’s gotta be, we have the Four Horsemen of the Hop-copalypse,” Josh let the crowd know. “And with 13 points, I Quizzed My Pants,” and so on. The team names were clever, typically punning on either beer or trivia or both. I was shaking my head over “The Posinators,” expecting us to come up somewhere in the middle of the pack. By Carol’s calculations we had missed about six or seven answers, out of a total of forty-ish. The anxiety was off the charts as Josh continued to read name after name. “With 28 points, Beer Necessities!” Every team got polite applause. You could see the teams across the venue cheer when their names were read. They’d high five each other and start to gather their things. I was sure Josh would fumble our name very, very soon. But instead he said, “And now, coming in third place, and the recipient of a ten dollar Device gift card… Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow!”

Wait, what? Did we miss our name somewhere? I wasn’t sure how Josh was going to pronounce the Posinators (which is by the way pronounced POSE-in-ay-terz) but I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard any variation of it. If this was true, we were one of the top two teams, likely the runner up. Are you even kidding me? “And now in second place, and the winner of a fifteen dollar Device gift card…” Here we go, I thought. How awesome to come come in second place the very first time I ever played trivia? I was dying inside, ready to high five, or hell, even hug and kiss all my new friends. I was a few beers in, remember.

“The Smarty Pints!” WAIT, WAIT! WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT! We missed like six or seven answers. That’s not enough to actually win this thing, was it? Our score sheet must have gotten blown away by Sacramento’s famous Delta breeze. “And your winners, for a twenty dollar Device gift card, THE PAWS-I-NATORS!”

We won. We actually fucking won. Out of thirty or forty teams, my first time ever playing, with three brand new friends, we won. We won!

I couldn’t believe it. I hugged my new friends. I was grinning from ear to ear. I didn’t care about my share of the gift card, but Carol asked if we all wanted to come back next week, play again, and spend it. I assured them I’d be there, and I put it in my calendar. I floated home on wings of pure joy. How often do you secretly always want to try something, then you do, and you absolutely crush it? Typically it takes some time, you have to work your way around to it. You have to build up those muscles and learn to deal with some loss and some failure. That’s certainly been my story. I’ve never been really good at anything, and that’s not false modesty. I think I’m a very good friend, and a pretty good father. A decent employee even. But I don’t have any real talents that I kick ass at, including trivia. I’ve dabbled in a million things in my life: playing guitar, ukulele, poker, backgammon, and chess. Deep woods backpacking, riding motorcycles, singing, gardening, writing, gaming. Don’t forget cooking. I tend to reach a very basic level of bare proficiency, then I get kind of bored and move on. This is why I can strum some chords around the campfire, I can beat novices at chess, and can make a decent meal – especially if I have a recipe. But for the most part, I just dabble. I amuse myself, and I don’t beat myself up over the fact that I have never truly mastered anything. Not usually anyway. And although I’m not a trivia whiz, my new team and I have emerged victorious at least 25 times at Device over the last two and a half years since I met Pam, Carol, Jeremy, and later Matt and Verdette, who rounded out our team the following week, among a roving cast of characters who filled in from time to time.

The rules were simple: six players, no exceptions. If you say “Well, numbers seven and eight are not really playing,” try telling that to all the other teams, as Josh would say. I’m not 100% sure how this crew all knew each other: Some combination of living near each other in the College Glen neighborhood in Sacramento, overlapping with some of them having worked for the same state agency at one point. I, the outsider, had no connections with any of them except for sitting at the right table at the right time that fateful Thursday night in 2021. But they quickly became like family. Especially Pam.

At the age of fifty-four myself, I only knew Pam for two and a half years, so that’s what, five percent of my life or so? Not long, but she left a big impact. Pam was unfailingly positive. She’d always ask you, sincerely, how you are doing. Like sincerely: “How are you DO-ing?” not “How ya doin?” She wanted an authentic answer. And you were compelled, and even grateful, to give her one. She would remember little things you told her, and she would ask about them later. How was your work trip? How did that meeting go? How’s your girl? Congratulations on your daughter’s college graduation! Your kids are so great. Your girlfriend is so sweet. You’re so smart. And she wasn’t blowing smoke; Pam was simply a positive person, without being saccharine or phony.

She had plenty of her own adventures as well. She was an extrovert’s extrovert, without being annoying or ingratiating. She would not hesitate to jump in her van, drive all night – with Posey in tow – sleep on the side of the road, and attend a Super Bowl the next day. Or a World Series game. Or an Eagles or Doobie Brothers concert. Or a World Cup. The woman got around. And for someone in a wheelchair with a dog in tow, her lifestyle wore me out just hearing about it.

Pam hated being in a wheelchair, and this is maybe the thing I admired the most about her, as dumb as that sounds. Let’s be real: any of us ambulatory people would absolutely fucking hate being in a wheelchair. No one wants to be an inspiration. No one wants to triumph over tragedy. Pam did not overtly complain about her situation, but to those she knew fairly well – and I would be honored to be considered among that number, despite the few years I knew her – she didn’t try to put on a brave face. She complained fiercely about the lack of handicapped parking around the R Street Corridor here in Midtown. She didn’t drink much, and bemoaned having to use public restrooms, which was a real issue being as she was out in public so much. Airplanes were tough, but she figured it out to the extent she needed to in order to attend the events she loved. (She had tickets to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia/New Zealand in July and August of this year. Both she and the USWNT were disappointed by their respective lack of presence.)

She didn’t like being in a wheelchair, and goddammit, none of us would either. She didn’t pretend everything was OK. She put on her game face like a fucking competitor and went out and won at life despite the odds, but she didn’t claim it was easy.

She taught P.E. for decades at a local elementary school. I think some people were surprised to know this, but I wasn’t. Not only because Pam never let anything stop her, but because I had been a proud member of Walter Reed Junior High’s infamous Donkey Squad. Mr. Wolters was probably thick-fit enough for an old guy (he may have been forty-two when we were twelve), but Mr. Sipantzi was short and round-ish and I never saw either of those guys do anything physical while “teaching” us about physical education in North Hollywood in the 1980’s. Mr.Pally was cool, and seemed fit enough. Some students claimed to have smoked weed with him – a boast I didn’t and still don’t believe for a second. Mr. Pally never called us donkeys. Mr. Hensley sure did though. He was fit AF, and never took off his aviator sunglasses. He may have been the youngest of the bunch, but seemed as much of a dick as Wolters and Sipantzi.

Am I being unfair to these men I remember from the 1980’s, two of which are likely dead now, and the other two may well be. Well, let me remind you: If you forgot your gym clothes, if they were dirty, if your name was not written correctly in Marks-A-Lot on the green and yellow reversible T-shirt, if you were a stoner, if you had long hair, if you were not a good athlete, if you didn’t have an absence slip, they called you a donkey. “Donkey Squad, over on the bench! You donkeys just sit there until the end of P.E. And think about not being donkeys tomorrow.” Fuck those guys.

I never saw Pam teach a class, but I guarantee you she never called a student a donkey. Being in a wheelchair as a P.E. teacher was likely no different than being any other kind of P.E. teacher. None of mine ever really participated in athletics with us, they just yelled at us and told what to do. Pam I am certain was an engaging, positive, supportive, participatory instructor and cheerleader for her kids. She taught at the elementary school for so long, thousands of students must have crossed her path. Many times some young adult would come up to us if we were out somewhere, “Ms. Pam? Ms. Pam!” They were just delighted to see her again. “Hey, how are you DO-ing?” Pam would always reply. “What’s been going ON with you?” Typically she wouldn’t remember their names, but she could sometimes summon up the young person they once were.

After one of these encounters – not with the young man pictured above – she told us confidentially, almost conspiratorially, that she was sure the kid would have come to no good. Bad attitude, unsupportive or absent parents, always in trouble. Of course she never told the kid that, then or later. To her delight, the kid would often prove her wrong by letting her know he was engaged and in med school or some such. It was always a delight to have a former student recognize Ms. Pam. She also directed the school plays and musicals, organized field days, and Lord knows what else. She’d show up at Little League playoff games for her students to cheer them on, only to find she had students on both teams. So she cheered them all on.

She went everywhere. Everywhere! She had been to multiple Super Bowls, World Series’, Final Fours, NFC and NLDS championship games, and an incredible number of concerts, camping, and other road trips. Last year when her beloved 49ers played the L.A. Rams in the NFC Championship in Los Angeles, I watched her mental anguish as she tried to decide for days beforehand whether to drive to L.A. for the game. I tried to convince her to stay, to watch it with the rest of the Posinators at Jeremy’s house. But that’s my way: save money, hang with friends, and don’t drive. Pam was far more adventurous than me, and really more than most people I know. Lord knows how much a single seat would run. Money did not seem to be a big issue with Pam. She had enough stuff to deal with, and my sense was that the cost of attending big-time events was one thing, mercifully, that wasn’t really a problem. Sometimes she did, but often she did not buy a ticket in the ADA section of an event. She found they frequently stuck wheelchair-bound fans in areas with terrible, obstructed views. She discovered if she just played dumb about her non-ADA seats sometimes – and she was the farthest thing from dumb you’d ever meet – she’d end up in a pretty good spot at a big event.

For the Niners vs. Rams NFC championship, she finally decided to procure a ticket and drive to L.A. with Posey in tow the day of the game. She didn’t go with a friend and didn’t meet anyone there. I don’t know what her bathroom situation was in the van. I had been in it; it was messy, but I sure didn’t snoop around. I guess she just stopped at restrooms in Starbucks or God forbid gas stations like the rest of us do when we travel, except it had to be way more of a pain in the ass for her, and likely a bit nastier. I think she also tried not to drink too much water.

She made it to the game and had a miserable time. The Niners lost, and she said the Rams fans were horrible, nasty people. I said “That’s L.A. for you.” (Sorry, Chad.) She came back the same evening, driving all night, and I don’t know if she taught her P.E. class the next morning; it wouldn’t surprise me if she did. But she didn’t really have a miserable time. Her life was about adventure, and this was just one chapter of many. If the Niners had won it would have been incredible. You have to take that chance. It’s not an adventure if you know how it’s going to turn out.

Later that year, last year, she and her brother and I went to see Paul McCartney in Oakland. She would be staying the night with her brother in the Bay Area, so I drove myself and met up at Steve’s house. Steve was a delightful guy, and a big rock music fan like the rest of us. I’ve written about The Beatles before, having fallen in love with them at the age of 11, but I had never seen any of them live. I missed McCartney’s concert in Sacramento, opening the brand new Golden 1 Center several years ago, so I decided this would be an ideal time to see the legend, as Sir Paul was pushing 80 years old.

We met at Steve’s, had a great barbecue dinner, and we all set out for the show in Pam’s van, Posey coming along for the ride, of course. (I don’t know if Posey was technically a service dog at that time. She never wore one of those vests, but Pam brought her most places. However, Posey did not attend big football games or concerts, for her own safety. Carol has Posey now, and she does in fact wear a service vest. Carol calls her a “service dog in training,” but I think really Carol just likes to take her around with her.)

Pam never liked being a passenger in a car, I think because she didn’t want to be dependent on people lifting her, carrying her, and dealing with her chair. Her van was outfitted with a lift that could get her and the chair in and out; she loved that autonomy. Also, she was a passenger the night she was injured. Who can blame her for always wanting to take her own wheels, no pun intended? So Pam drove us to the Paul McCartney concert, while Steve rode shotgun. There were no other seats in the van, save one: the wheelchair. She implored me to hold on tight. There were some locks that I should employ, which prevented the chair from rolling around when it was empty and Pam was driving alone. It was a funky little setup, but I got settled in. She told me to hang on to the straps that were mounted to some custom framing on the inside roof of the van as well, the whole time apologizing for the setup, and the disarray of the inside of the vehicle. I assured her it was all fine, that I grew up riding on the backs of motorcycles and in the beds of pickups. I rode motorcycles myself later, and bikes, scooters and skateboards. I could handle the van. She warned me that her niece had tipped straight over backward in the same position and banged her head. I asked how old the niece was. Pam said 13, and I said I’ll be fine.

I was fine, but it was indeed a wild ride. Us walkers are accustomed to chairs that don’t roll around, so I took Pam’s admonition to hold on to the mounted straps to heart. We got to Oakland Arena, I tried to get Posey to go potty before she would be locked in the van for the next several hours, and we made our way inside. Pam didn’t like to be pushed in her wheelchair; she used the kind that had no handles or anything, but the semi-steep slopes leading up to the arena entrance required it, so she grudgingly accepted help. The concert was incredible; Paul at nearly 80 played for about three hours. There were lovely tributes to John and George, and unlike other older rock acts I’ve seen, Paul did not heavily rely on backup musicians and singers to cover for his years in the saddle. Sure, he had an incredible band with him (who have been together with Paul longer than The Beatles ever were – chew on that!) but it’s just a standard five-piece: Paul on lead vocals and bass, a lead and rhythm guitar player, a keys man, and a drummer. He played mainly Beatles songs, some Wings, some others, and I’d be lying if I said tears didn’t stream down my face during Blackbird, Something, and Let It Be.

We all hit the restroom after the gig in advance of the drive back to Steve’s, and despite the long line to get into the women’s, Pam stormed to the front of the crowd. She knew there was a handicapped stall in there, and she’d be damned if she was going to wait in a line of able-bodied women to use it. Whether you be male or female or neither or in-between: know that when you use a handicapped stall, which we all do from time to time, there may be a person that actually needs that stall waiting. I was proud of her, but obviously this assertiveness was something she learned a very long time ago.

Leaving the arena, I had to track back to find Pam’s shoe. Hanging out with Pam, there were times a shoe, a sock, or something important would fall out of her possession. It’s different with us walkers; we have command of our bodies. We can turn in any direction, we have everything we’re carrying literally at our fingertips. It’s much harder in a wheelchair. When you have a friend using one, be prepared to pick up or go search for things she or he may have lost. It’s more frustrating for them than you, believe me.

We lost track of Steve, but we knew we’d catch up with him at the van. Coming back down the incline toward the parking lot, Pam was in full command of her chair. She was moving at a really good pace, faster than a jogger, say, but she was completely at one with the vessel, knowing intimately precisely how fast she could roll, turn, what it took to stop herself, what kind of terrain she could traverse, what kind would be a pain in the ass, and what kind she just wouldn’t attempt. All that is to preface that she was absolutely flying down this hill. I was kind of lightly jogging to keep up, although I couldn’t quite without actually running. But to the the arena security managing the departing concert-goers, she appeared to be a disabled woman in a wheelchair careening out of control. These dudes absolutely freaked out as Pam came flying down the exit slope; they tried to jump in her way to save her life. She expertly managed the sharp left turn at the bottom, slowing down on a dime as the ground became level. The security guys were panicking, out of breath, “Ma’am, ma’am, are you OK?!” She didn’t give two shits how they felt and just kept rolling on in the direction of the van. I, of course, felt compelled to stop and explain to the exasperated guards that my friend in fact was in complete control of the wheelchair the entire time, and that their reaction was common. They thought they almost saw a woman die, and I felt badly for them. Then I moved on too.

We rescued Posey from the van, and this time she had no trouble using the facilities on a patch of grass nearby. Steve was there waiting for us, and then Pam drove us all back to his house. From there I made the trip back to Sacramento while she stayed with her brother. It was the only big concert I ever went to with Pam. One thing to know about me is that if I’ve had a drink or two, I will buy a ticket to almost any concert. This is why I bought a ticket to The Steve Miller Band with Pam for September 22, 2023 in Berkeley. She died about a month before that, and I didn’t have the ticket; I had simply Venmo’d her the money. I chalked it up as a loss: a far, far, smaller loss than losing the beautiful person who was Pam, herself. And really, who cares about Steve Miller in 2023? I didn’t, but again, I had had a beer or two when the subject came up.

We went on one camping trip together, and to countless brewhouses, cocktail lounges, and restaurants. Pam always charged right in, not knowing or caring what their handicapped accommodations were like. She didn’t care. She didn’t seem to see herself as any different than anyone else – and in fact, of course, she wasn’t – she just had this pain-in-the-ass wheelchair she had to drag around with her. I take that back, actually; she was different than everyone else. She was better. She was kinder, she was more enthusiastic, she was more daring, she was more caring, she was more adventurous, she was funnier. She was simply one of the best people I ever knew, and I only knew her for a few short years.

I’m told her final few weeks were tough, as honestly most peoples’ are. Jeremy told us about her checking herself out of the hospital, coming home briefly, then driving up to Clear Lake – a two-plus hour drive away – to hang out with family. When she returned, exhausted and sick, she called Jeremy to help her out of the van and into her house, and to her couch. The next day he found her in the exact same position, after she had assured him that she was fine. I can relate. My friends and I took care of very sick man once, and you don’t always quite know what their state is, or what it’s going to be after you walk out the door for the night. I learned later that Jeremy spent a lot of time with Pam at the end, and those are never easy times for either party in that situation. Jeremy is a real prince of a man. Pam deserved no less.

I went to a business conference in June, and one of the keynote speakers was a gentleman named Mark Pollock. Mark is an Irishman, and was a strapping athlete at 22 when he went blind from an aggressive opthamological disease. Literally within two weeks he went from being perfectly healthy and sighted to completely blind. For the next twelve years he challenged himself in ways us seeing folk rarely do: he became an ultramarathon runner competing in endurance races alongside sighted athletes across deserts, the world’s highest mountains, and even the South Pole. Such an inspirational story, right? Then twelve years after he became blind, he fell out of a second story window – because when you are blind, the world is much more dangerous – and broke his back, becoming paralyzed from the waist down. Mark is done with ultramarathoning now, but he continues to inspire others with his indefatigable spirit. He’s perhaps the world’s foremost advocate for biomedical technology to map the human brain to neural mechanics that are helping paralyzed people to walk again. I had the great fortune to spend some time with Mark at this conference and talk to him about his journey. Of course, like many idiots meeting famous, inspirational people, I tried to relate by talking to him about someone I also knew, in a similar (but very different) situation to him: My wheelchair-bound friend Pam.

But Mark is an amazing and empathetic individual. He told me to tell Pam not to give up. The advances in technology were staggering, and there was in fact hope in our – and even Pam’s – lifetime that the paralyzed will walk again. Mark was very involved in all this research, and gave me his email address to give to Pam if she wished to contact him and speak further about it. I spoke to Pam about this when I returned home, giving her Mark’s contact info. She said “Yeah, they’ve been talking about this stuff for a long time.” I don’t know if she ever reached out. And of course it all turned out to be too late for Pam, tragically.

Mark and I – I felt – had gained some rapport at a cocktail party before a VIP dinner at the event, where we discussed Pam’s case. Later at the dinner I was very pleased to find myself at Mark’s table. I suddenly remembered that I also had a very good friend who was blind. Again, in my pitiful way of trying to relate to a notable person, I told him across the table that not only did I have a wheelchair-bound friend, but a blind friend too. I told this esteemed keynote speaker how we would tease our blind friend by saying things like “Oh, I see your wife dressed you in that penis shirt again.” Mark laughed his ass off. A couple of other people at the table laughed nervously. Several others, including the CEO of the company around which this conference was centered, simply ignored my dumb ass and focused on his food until the tawdry topic of conversation changed.

But that’s the thing: In my experience, people who have challenges or differences do not mind talking about them, and they do appreciate a sense of humor, as long as it’s not outright hurtful or overly familiar. They don’t want to explain every little thing to each stranger that walks by, but they also don’t want folks to walk on eggshells around them. This is why I told the penis shirt joke, and also why I stand by it. I clocked the disapproval of many at the table – and who invited this stoner from North Hollywood to a fancy business dinner party anyway? – but I’ll never forget Mark Pollock himself busting out laughing. I felt justified.

I feel like I’ll never be done missing and talking about Pam, but I’ll attempt to wrap this up soon. The trivia team has been seeing more of each other since her passing. We’ve gone back to Device a few times since she left us, reclaiming our original name: The Posinators, and eventually Pam’s Posinators. (Early on, we started changing our name every couple of months just for fun. My favorite was coined by our teammate Matt: “Nerd Immunity” during early days of mass vaccinations.) We came in second out of thirty or forty teams our first two times back. Verdette got the competitive spirit, asking us to commit to return each week in October to try to claim the monthly prize. We committed. Our first two weeks back in October, we won. Then we won the last week of October as well, winning the month. For Pam.

I don’t spend much time on Facebook these days, but I logged on and sought out Pam’s page after she left us. I was moved by the dozens, and eventually hundreds of people who commented once they learned about her passing. I spent a little bit of time scrolling through the years, looking at her pictures with the real Buster Posey, at all her concerts, sporting events, and students’ endeavors. About two weeks later I got a Facebook message from her, saying “Hey, is this you in this video?” I knew it was some kind of scam or hack. I deleted the message and ignored it. Well, someone must have reported this to Facebook. Her account is now GONE. Years and years and years of photos and her writing and telling the rest of us about her amazing adventures are somehow gone. I don’t know how to fight this. I’m not her family. I wish her Facebook page could be memorialized. It’s not my fight. It will never not infuriate me though. Every couple of weeks I check back, to see if it’s returned.

I continue to mourn her. I certainly didn’t know her as well or as long as others, but the woman had a tremendous impact on me. Every day I miss her. I miss her joy, I miss her spirit, I miss her fight, I miss her struggle, I miss her intelligence, her happiness, her humor, her openness, her realness, her crankiness. Every day I wish I had texted her more, called her more, done the hard thing by truly trying to help her with things. I didn’t. I texted her some. I called her some. I gave feeble offers of “let me know if you need anything,” and she never said she did. Other people, like Jeremy and Carol and maybe others, did that hard work. I’ll be forever grateful.

Early on in our friendship I walked her out to her van after a trivia night. When I saw her license plate, it floored me. “I WL WALK” read her personalized license plate. I was choked up, embarrassed, as I felt like I was moments away from openly weeping. I don’t know if she noticed. Of course she will walk. She had to believe that, in maybe a spiritual sense. She wasn’t done walking after the crash that changed her and so many others’ lives. She wasn’t ready for that to be taken from her. Who would be? “I Will Walk!” She walked taller and prouder and more authentically that just about anyone I’ve ever met. She’s been gone more than two months, but I know she’s walking still.