I remember it like it was yesterday. I was wearing a red shirt and eating noodles. Then, after lunch, the teacher wheeled the TV into the room and said, "I think there's something you should all see." Then she turned on an episode of the Cosby show which I'd seen. It was the episode where they're remembering when they were kids, they were 17 and they went down to the fishing hole. During the commercial break there was a commercial for those little blocks that are like Legos with hinges. Then I went home and my dad said "James Gurley left the band."
  --Dennis, 18
  Owahu, IA

I was talking on the phone to my girlfriend. I used to talk for hours to my girlfriend. I kept on getting a beep, representing someone trying to call me on the other line, but I didn't find out who it was. Then after about an hour an operator broke into the call and said someone had performed an emergency breakthrough. It was my friend Biff, a fellow BBatHC enthusiast. He told mein a strained voice, "Will, James Gurley just left BBatHC." Needless to say, I was shocked.
  --Will, 18
  Fairmont, VT

It was a sunny day, unseasonably warm, and I was walking home with my friend Liz like I always did. Liz was wearing that green shirt, the same one she wore to the last day of school ninth grade. I remember it perfectly because that was the first time I saw her wearing it after that, and I remember commenting about that as we walked. We were reminiscing about the end of ninth grade when Jan McCarrigan came running up to us, out of breath. Jan lives down the street from me and I never knew her that well. She doesn't go to our school, but we knew each other from the neighborhood. She looked really upset, so I asked her what was wrong. "Didn't you hear? Today James Gurley announced he was leaving Big Brother."
  --Karen, 17
  Greensboro, NC

Vivid is the word for my recollection of James Gurley's departure from Big Brother and the Holding Company. On that day I woke up and I remember I had some cereal. Then I went to work. After an eight-hour day, I came home. In the car, I heard on the radio about James's exit from his musical home. Then I went home and played some video games and listened to Big Brother and the Holding Company and went to bed.
  --Ravi, 37
  Venice, FL

I am a Brazilian scientist in dire need of some attention. I am starved for human contact here in Brazil. Especially now that my one link to humanity, James Gurley, has been severed. The day I found out was a sad one: my pet lemur, Charles, had developed housemaid's knee.
  --Omar Brazil Chioutlguay, 43
  Buenos Aires, Brazil

[I was] spooking some in bred southerners. I was ....(sniffle.. sniffle)...telling those damn inbreeders...when suddenly i got paged by ...(sniffle)....saint peter...(mooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaan)....that my own cyclops of a....a.....a.....SON!!!!!!! HAD LEFT THE GREATEST BAND IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!......(sniffle sniffle)
  --God
  Alabama


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