Life is weird...

When I was a teenager, and deep into my Christian phase, a friend and I made a local Christian bookstore our hang out of choice. They had a great music selection (as in, rock music, not just your typical gospel stuff), and on Friday nights, they had live performances. They also had a coffee/juice bar, so we could basically hang there until we decided we were hungry enough to go find food somewhere.

In the course of hanging out there, we got to know the owners, who were all really sweet people.

Eventually, my friend got a job there, so we all hung out there even more than before, and became friends with the owners. One of them especially, went out of his way for us, opening up the coffee bar early, or opening it up just for us even when it was supposed to be closed all day. He was the sweetest guy...

I still have fond memories of getting a couple friends together and heading over there on Friday nights to see local Christian performers live, for free. And I remember how the owners were nice enough to sell another friend's band's album without much of a markup, so the band got to keep most of the profits (I still have that album somewhere... They were actually pretty good). And I loved how they didn't mind a group of teenagers hanging out in the store -- they encouraged it in fact. I guess they rathered us hanging out there, in a Christian environment, than going somewhere less... Well, less Christian.

Last week there was a small plane crash not too far from where I live. The names of those involved were not publicized, so I didn't pay too much attention to it. Planes seem to crash every now and again out here... We have a lot of small airports, and a lot of inexperienced people flying Cesnas.

But I just heard from a friend this morning that one of the people killed in this particular crash was one of the owners of this store that we spent so much time at growing up. Her old boss, and our old friend. The one who was extra nice to us.

Life is just so weird sometimes...