Forgive me if I’ve told this story before. I think I’ve at least alluded to it somewhere, but I searched for a tweet of mine including the word “Petty” or a blog post dedicated specifically to this and I found nothing.
So, here goes.
In 2018, I went to the Indy 500. This was a gamechanger in my life, firstly because of milk, secondly because it kind of indirectly led to the whole Burnley thing, and thirdly because I’d never spent that much time in Indianapolis before. The afternoon before the race, my host and I were drinking drinks (probably beers) on some rooftop patio, and the topic of celebrity deaths came up. We began to riff. My friend, Mssr. Weepants (as he is known), was doing a bit where his character remembered *exactly where he was* when celebrities died, only to reveal he’d found out a long time after the death itself. Example: “I remember where I was when I heard Michael Jackson died. It was 2015, and someone said, ‘Ryan—Michael Jackson died six years ago.’”
It was a good bit. It went on for a few minutes. Until I said, “I wonder if there’s anybody who heard the first report that Tom Petty died but didn’t hear the second report saying that he was actually still alive, and who now thinks he’s dead.”
To which Mssr. Weepants replied, “Oh no. Stu.”
If you don’t remember, there was some confusion about Tom Petty’s death. There was the first report, that he’d died. There was the second report, that he was alive but in bad shape. And then, unbeknownst to me until the day before the 2018 Indy 500, there was evidently a third report: Tom Petty had, indeed, died.
Somehow, I’d missed it. Or I’d confused the third report for the initial false alarm? Or I’d understood what happened and just forgotten?
Whatever the case, that’s where I was when I learned of Tom Petty’s death. Some bar in Indianapolis about eight months after it had happened. I think it was by Fountain Square.
RIP to the Heartbreaker.
