Farlops Industries

My friend, Wade, is dead.

By Pace Arko on November 7th, 2006

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he
never shows
anybody.
Mark Twain, Following
the Equator (1897)

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width="300" />

I apologize for the length of the following. I didn’t have
time to make
it concise.

How do I start?

On Monday evening, October 23rd, sometime before 6:24PM, a
very close
friend of mine for seventeen years, Wade
J. Tyler, got into an argument
over a utility bill with one of the tenants he was renting a
room to.
This might have just ended in a scuffle, thrown punches, someone
calling
the cops and perhaps a few charges, if Wade hadn’t owned a shotgun. As
it was, it
ended in a murder-suicide.

I first heard this news on Wednesday the 25th. The cops had
went through
Wade’s address book and started calling friends and relatives. People
started calling people until eventually the news reached me.

How could
Wade do something like this? How could this happen?

Wade was one of the most mellow, gentle people I knew. It was
true that
he was introverted among strangers but among friends, he easily and
openly laughed and joked. If he felt strongly about something, and when
he was among friends, he was unafraid to voice his opinion. He had an
easy and unforced sense of humor. He got along wonderfully with
children.

I don’t think he was the cliched creepy, quiet loner who
stockpiled
weapons. For most of the time that I knew him he seemed entirely sane
and normal. He had friends. He had a life.

But he was complicated and real. I knew him long enough to see
how this
could have happened. I feel particularly able to judge him because of
how similar he and I were and how long I knew him.

He, like myself, was a passive-aggressive. His general
response to
confrontation, stress and anger would be to shut down and
withdraw–shut
down and stack up his own anger. He was one to avoid stressful
situations. People like this, and I speak from personal experience,
tend
to rarely show anger until it’s already gone too far. People like this
tend to let others treat them like doormats until one day they flip.

Some people don’t understand or deal with passive-aggressives
very well.
They don’t get the feedback they expect from us and so, in confused
irritation, they keep needling until suddenly, and to their great
surprise, we explode in their faces.

My guess is that Justin T. Horne, the man Wade murdered, was
one of
these people. From what I’ve read in news and heard from Wade’s sister,
Justin, justifiably angry yet oblivious to where his badgering was
leading, pursued Wade through the house needling him until Wade blew up
and drew out a shotgun.

Wade would rarely blame others for his shortcomings. If
anything he’d
turn all his blame and anger inward so as to paralyze himself further.
Related to this, Wade was never one to ask for help. He tended to keep
his troubles to himself. This is another classic tendency of passive
aggressives. If only he’d asked us, his friends, to cover his bills
while he got back on his feet, maybe none of this would have ever
happened.

Wade, like myself, wasn’t especially diligent. Or if he was,
it was in
very specific, economically useless ways.

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width="400" />

Wade was very intelligent and perceptive. He’d have remarkable
moments
of creativity. He loved to discuss very abstract topics and was quickly
bored with what he viewed as trivial.

It wasn’t that he lacked ability, he was just unfocused and
undisciplined in his pursuits. He, like myself, was a slacker and
rather
scatterbrained. He, and I, procrastinated constantly when faced with
something difficult or unpleasant.

So I’m not at all surprised to learn that he forgot to pay
bills, failed
in his duties as a landlord, had unpaid traffic tickets or a suspended
license. He’d forget a lot of important stuff like that. Actually he’d
never really forget it. He’d just avoid it and fret over it until it
grew into a crisis that had to be dealt with. This was a recurring
pattern in his life. I myself have been there few times.

Wade, given these tendencies, really shouldn’t have been a
landlord.

Wade, given these tendencies, probably shouldn’t have owned a
gun.

I knew he owned one almost from the beginning of our
friendship. When he
first told me about it, perhaps anticipating objections, he went on at
length about gun safety and training. Perhaps this lecture wasn’t
really
aimed at me. Maybe it was meant to reassure himself that he was being
responsible.

His ex-wife was uncomfortable with it. His sister was
uncomfortable with
it. His parents were uncomfortable with it. Some of his friends were
uncomfortable with it.

Why did he need that gun? If he were here, he’d probably give
give us
his reasonable opinions. And if we all knew him well, we’d trust him to
be responsible and to make his own decisions.

But I think on that day, back in 1991, I caught a glimpse of