raramomtoo3

Well hello dear readers…Happy Saturday to you….I hope you lucky ones enjoyed sleeping in today.  I on the other hand was at working fixing breakfast for weary travels.  The waffles were a hard push today but hey the fewer I have to cook the better.  I wanted to give you some back ground on myself and my family.  I know some of you know me personally and some don’t.  On April 10^th 2007 I received a phone call that changed life as I knew it forever.  The local police department called and asked for me to come to my mother and brother’s apartment building.  My brother had hung himself.  For the first few hours we thought he had killed himself but his friends came forward and told us he had been playing something called “The Choking Game”.  Since then my mother and I have made it our mission to spread awareness of this activity and do our best to save other families from this pain.  I know I usually make jokes and have fun but sometimes life isn’t funny.  I buried my nineteen year old brother and the pain is sometimes too real to even smile much less joke.  Tomorrow I have two dear friends travelling through and staying with us and together we are going to do a big media blitz and raise as much awareness as possible.  So for the next few days I will be wrapped up.  What I am going to do is cheat on you.  I am going to type up my blogs today and just post them on certain days.  As a tribute I am going to share some of my favorite stories.  Justin wasn’t always a good kid and he did some stupid things that at the time were far from funny but now when we look back they were kind of funny.  So I will share some of those stories daily.  Right now I wanted to share a few facts on The Choking Game and maybe you might know someone who is playing this “game” or if you share these facts with someone you know and then pass it on or pay it forward and maybe just maybe we can save some lives together.  The Choking Game is known by many names such as Space Monkey, Knockout game; Pass out Game and many more.  This game has taken hundreds of lives.  It dates back to 1934 when the first recorded death was reported.  The activity is where you choke the other person to the point of passing out and you get this “rush” that last for about 30 seconds.  It is the same feeling as when you stand up to fast.  This practice of doing it with friends is bad enough.  Even with others you are still losing brain cells every time you do this.  It is when they start playing by themselves is when the children start dying.  They often take something such as dog leashes, belts, wire, and rope or in my brother’s case an extension cord and tie them to a stationary location.  They then wrap the object around their neck and pull till they nearly pass out.  In my brother’s case he passed out completely and since no one was there he basically drifted off to sleep and choke while he was passed out.  Our mother had found him and tried to save him but it was too late.  You hear these stories over and over.  The most frightening thing about this “game” is the average age of the children dying from this is 9-14 years old.  There are some as young as 7 and as old as 55 have also died from this “game”.  I beg of you if you know anyone in this age range or any ranges please pass on this information to them so together we can stop the “game”.  For more information please go to www.stop-the-choking-game.com.  I encourage you to please help to stop this “game”…..

So till Wednesday take a breather from my normal rants and complaints and learn a little about my brother who is now is angel wings and a crooked halo……  In memory of Justin Keith Dooley 7/15/87 thru 4/10/07…we love and miss you….

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