Bend News

Seven Years And Seven Rules

In Memory Of A Montana Friend

By Joseph Friedrichs, 7-23-08

Carley Spielman.

I don’t remember the first time I saw my mother. I can’t recall the first time I watched Michael Jordan dunk a basketball and I can’t remember landing my first fish.

But I remember the first time I laid eyes on Carley Spielman. I remember it as though it happened this morning.

I was walking at the time with my friend Luke from Great Falls. We were trotting down that narrow sidewalk in front of the liberal arts building heading toward Turner Hall on campus at the University of Montana. Luke and I were young, punk freshmen at the time. It was a comfortable October afternoon. Brown leaves danced across Missoula walkways and streets in a never-ending tango that seemed to welcome winter and simultaneously yearn for summer.

As Luke and I walked stride for stride in our blissful state of freshmen stupor, Carley arrived directly behind us. I remember laughing at one second, and then suddenly this creature, this girl was there. Wham! That’s how it happens. It happens that quickly.

When Carley started walking behind us, and she was right on our heels for some reason, I noticed that Luke seemed very uncomfortable. As it turns out, Luke and some of his dorm buddies had spent the previous two evenings making prank phone calls to dozens and dozens of girls on campus. Carley and her roommate had been one of the victims. Nothing too outlandish was said during the barrage of phone calls Luke and his merry pranksters made, according to a variety of sources. However, Luke and his crew were eventually busted and threatened to be expelled from college.

Back to the scene, Carley knew it was Luke who had made the ridiculous calls. Likewise, Luke knew that Carley knew it was he who delivered the prank.

“Oh,” he said to Carley,” hey, um. Um, hey.”

Carley laughed very quietly.

“What’s up Luke?” she inquired.

“Going to lunch at the store up here,” he said. “You know, the Country Store up here. It’s lame.”

Next there was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“What do you have there?” I flirtatiously asked Carley, having no idea what the situation was.

“It’s called a pizza,” she said.

Then she walked away.

That was the first time I met Carley Spielman.

And now, seven years after her death, that moment is so fresh in my mind I can remember that she had a supreme pizza in that box. I can see the black checkmark on the box where it was labeled so. I can hear the leaves crunching beneath my white and gray Nike shoes as Luke and I cut across the grass toward the Griz statue so he could avoid additional awkwardness at the hands of Carley Spielman. That’s how it happens. It happens that quickly.

About a week after I first crossed paths with Carley, I met her roommate, Rebecca, at a Halloween Dance Party in downtown Missoula. I was dressed as some kind of half-ass monk costume. To no degree of certainty can I describe exactly what Rebecca was wearing. However, I do recall she was wearing a silver crown, although maybe it was a bracelet. Nonetheless, she looked great and I asked her to dance and we did. After a few moments we participated in the ritual that most 18 year olds do when they are drunk in a bar, and we started making out. This lasted for about 6 seconds before Carley busted through the crowd and ripped me off Rebecca.

“What are you doing?!” she screamed at Rebecca.

Carley then insisted it was time for Rebecca and the rest of the crew to “get the hell” out of there. Not before I got Rebecca’s phone number though, of course.

“1500,” she said through mumbling lips.

A fellow freshman. A girl who lived on campus. Yeah, that’s how it happens. It happens that quickly.

As the months went on I spent an ample amount of time with Rebecca. Girlfriend isn’t the right term, but it’s the first one that comes to mind. However, because I was 18 and had no key to how fast time moves and no plan whatsoever for the future, things eventually turned to mush with Rebecca. By Christmas I was so freaked out at the prospect of having to purchase her a gift and make long distance phone calls from Iowa to Montana I bailed on the scene altogether.

It wasn’t until February 2001 that I saw Carley again. It was inside the Bodega, a Missoula bar I considered to be a cool place to spend time back then. Countless nights of unprovoked aggression from brutes and an abundance of strange girls from places such as Butte and Billings have changed my mind nowadays regarding bars such as the Bodega.

Anyhow, Carley was in a good mood that night. So was I. She told me it “sucked” the way I ended things with Rebecca. I agreed. She said it would be cool if we could still be friends. Again, I agreed. And thus began my official friendship with Carley Spielman.

During the course of the next five months I learned that Carley - a Florida native who graduated from Great Falls High - worked on campus assisting a disabled woman. I found out she liked to discuss important issues, talk about things that were happening not only in her world, but the world beyond Missoula, and even Montana, a trait not always applicable to people who call the Big Sky Country their home.

I learned a lot of fine things about, and from Carley during that stretch of time. And of all the lessons I learned from her, nothing hit my gut deeper than when I learned that she died in a car accident during a hot afternoon on July 23. I remember walking in the door the following day to my old house on Arcadia Avenue. I remember my roommate standing there with a pained expression on his face.

“Joe,” he said, “what’s Carley’s last name?”

“Spielman.”

“Joe, man. Shit, man.”

I knew. I may have been 18. I may have 75. But I knew. That’s how it happens. It happens that quickly.

My life wasn’t destroyed when Carley died. I spent some time crying. I sent her an e-mail that mentioned the word “love,” even though I knew she was dead and would never read it. I hiked to the summit of Stuart’s Peak and listened to disc two from Ben Harper’s “Live From Mars” on repeat.

About a year after Carley died I worked up the nerve to call her mother, Mary Jo, in Great Falls. I guess I just wanted to calm something inside myself by making that call. I spoke to Mary Jo for about 20 minutes. Toward the end of our conversation I admitted that I didn’t really know Carley very well, but that I was fascinated with her just the same.

“Carley was really interesting to me,” I told her mother. “And I don’t know why.”

Then the voice from the other end of the phone said something beautiful. Something I can hear as clear as the other voices in this coffee shop where I’m writing this story right now.

“It’s because she wanted everyone she met to feel alive, to feel good inside,” Mary Jo said. “I think that’s what her whole message was.”

A few weeks later I received a letter in the mail with a return address from Great Falls. It was from Carley’s mother. Inside was a note from her thanking me for the phone call and for remembering the positive her daughter brought to this planet, to these people. Also included in the envelope was a document Mary Jo found inside Carley’s computer not long after her death. It was a list of seven rules Carley typed out one night. A list of rules that she felt people should keep in mind each day. It’s a list I still read all these years later. Something I reach out to during times of confusion, fear, and now and again when I’m simply having a good day.

Carley Spielman died July 23, 2001. That’s how it happened to me seven years ago. It happened that quickly.

Carley Spielman’s Rules To Live By

1. My attitude on life is that you should live it to the full extent. You should live every day like it is your last because it could be your last day. I don’t fell that you should walk around all depressed. If you have problem try to solve it. You only have one life to live so make it the best.

2. I feel good about myself. I feel that you should never put yourself down. I feel everyone is equal to everyone. I feel that I am just as good and can do anything just as good as anyone else.

3. My relationship is good with my parents. I feel very comfortable telling them anything. They are my best friends. I trust them more than anyone in the world. They are whom I would turn to for help and they would always be there for me.

4. There is no power stronger than me. I am the only who can make myself do things for myself or do anything period.

5. I feel that in our society today we do talk more about sex. It does bother me when people express it, but I feel that if a guy and a girl have the right to express their sexual expression than gay people should have the right too.

6. I can deal with change pretty well. I think that change, conflict and facing reality just helps you out in the future. It makes you smarter knowing how to deal with those things helps out a lot more.

7.I think that when you die you just continue living as a spirit. I don’t think it is bad when you die because you are still alive in everyone else.

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