Chaos Magnet

Mourning a man we never knew

I don't understand why I'm taking John Ritter's death as hard as I am. I mean, he was an actor. It's not like he was President of the United States, or a relative, or even someone I'd met once on a street corner. I wasn't even a huge, obsessive fan of his. I admit that I never watched 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter until he passed away. Today I watched the one hour show in which the family deals with the death of his character, and it was as though I had lost someone that I knew.

Maybe it's just that he always seemed so ... nice. Just a genuinely nice person. One of those people, I guess, who makes you believe that maybe, just maybe, there are decent people in this world after all.

In case you were wondering, the show handled it very, very well. Some understated comedy that fit in with the normal rythm of the show, but no laugh track, so you could decide for yourself whether it was appropriate to laugh. And somehow, they made a show that made it OK to miss him, and to feel genuine sorrow at his passing.

Goodbye, John.