ACCOZZAGLIA

More an archival note-keeping entry for myself, but maelinnium, were she to log onto LJ ever again, would completely remember this sociological event:

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/14/us/houston-suburb-institutes-anti-suicide-plan.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/20/nyregion/follow-up-on-the-news-suicide-outbreak.html

In the first story, Gary Shivers was the older brother of Chris Shivers, and both lived on my street. It really hit Chris (who fell back a school year) and his mother (who tried to overdose three years later) pretty hard.

It was a nasty place to be growing up, despite all outward niceties purporting otherwise. It was even nastier being a queer kid, and it wouldn’t have shocked me in the slightest to learn that at least one of the victims was facing issues about their own sexuality.

More on the Hellmouth from my childhood (both in and out of school):

1984: Sex-offending millionaire killed by young male sex workers he confined to his mansion compound; second link [n.b., ugly place: I squeezed past the wrought iron barriers and walked about inside back in February 1988; tacky-as-hell, dodgy place]
1984: aforementioned chain of suicides
1986: Seven astronauts killed in the Challenger
1998: Principal at Clear Lake High goes “missing” in Gulf of Mexico after husband claimed she “fell overboard”
2000: transsexual Latina woman strangled to death and body left to rot on dirt road off NASA Road 1
2001: Andrea Yates drowns her five children in a bathtub
2002: Clara Harris kills her husband David at Clear Lake Hilton by running over him repeatedly with a Mercedes
2003: Seven astronauts killed in the Columbia
2003: four teens executed at their home
2007: former astronaut chases down her lover by driving to Florida, wearing space diapers all the way
2007: NASA worker opens fire on his co-workers, killing one and himself

I’ve been away for many years — nearly half my life ago — so I’m sure this is not an exhaustive list. Fun times.