In Memoriam: My Friend, Bert Tilley

I discovered yesterday just how deep friendships made over the Internet can become, and how affected we can be by people that we may never get to meet in person, but know intimately nonetheless. I found out yesterday morning that I had lost someone I had held in very high regard for the past nine years, a man named Bert Tilley, who lived in Attalla, Alabama, and whom I never once had the pleasure of meeting face to face, unfortunately. Despite the fact of never getting to talk to him in real life, I was broken up all day over the news, and when I got home and told Mrs. G about it -- breaking into heavy tears and sobs as I did -- she immediately began crying as well.

Bert and I -- along with a number of other people -- had frequented a web page many years ago, part of the Sci-Fi Channel's site at the time, called Caption This! The page was loosely associated with and somewhat similar to the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (most of the people who showed up there were fans of the show), in that the main event there was writing captions for screengrabs of whatever was being broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel at that moment. Wise-cracking and smart-assery were not just allowed, but actively encouraged, the raison d'etre of the site. We called this activity "capping." It may sound juvenile or foolish to many, but there were some very intelligent and funny people who showed up there, and we all made each other laugh a lot. Making a caption involved simply getting a screengrab -- the page refreshed every twenty seconds or so -- and writing something funny or silly or obscure or whatever underneath it, then clicking to enter it into the main page. As each captioned 'grab would enter the main page, or gallery, at the top, the rows of captioned images would move down the page and then disappear, replaced by new ones. It allowed us to express our humor, to try to make others laugh with our obscure references and knowledge of pop culture and horrible puns and what-not. It was quite entertaining, and allowed us to also chat and get to know one another, as it operated in real time and we were necessarily interacting with whoever else was in the gallery at the time.

We became a kind of extended community over the years, a few dozen and then a few hundred people with the capping site in common. Egroups and bulletin boards were created, many "cappers" (or "captioneers"), as we called ourselves, created web pages to preserve favorite screengrabs in permanent galleries of their own, and we even began to meet each other in real life. Romances sprang up -- I know of at least four couples who got together and were married after first meeting at that site -- and lasting friendships formed. I can't even remember now how many people I've met in the meat world through my Internet activities there, people from all over the country. Maybe 50-60? More? Quite possibly. Most everywhere I travel these days, I know someone in that part of the country through capping. New York; Seattle; New Orleans; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; Denver; San Diego; Richmond, Virginia; and here in San Francisco, I've gotten together with as many as 14 people at once, all of whom were there solely through the capping connection. One of my best friends here in SF now is a guy that I originally met through that site some nine years ago.

One of the more interesting guys I ever got to know this way was Bert Tilley. He was perhaps the world's worst most creative speller, and at the same time, one of the world's best writers and storytellers. He was bright, inquisitive, and had a wealth of knowledge in just about any subject you could name. He worked in radio, and tutored blind students, both at the local college. He said once that when he was young, he told people that when he grew up, he wanted to be either a hippopotamus or Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows. How could you not love someone with a mind like that?

His stories are the stuff of legend. There was one about a woman that he had been dating who wanted him to marry her, and how she ended up chasing him around the local Waffle House with a ring in hand, practically beating him up and screaming at him because he just wasn't that into her. Another was about a neighbor who decided to tackle a wasp's nest in a nearby tree, and, in the process, set another neighbor's flower garden and plastic windmill on fire using flaming arrows. All of them were hilarious, and often made even more so by his misspelled words and grammatical flubs. For instance, this sentence from the wasp story: "Now mind you, I am allergic to stinging incest." I know he meant "insects," but I'll be damned if it isn't ten times funnier the way he wrote it. There were times that I thought he actually made those mistakes on purpose, but he denied it. He said he was simply a product of the Alabama public school system.

Bert was just one of those guys that everybody loved. He made everybody laugh, and was never sarcastic or mean-spirited about it. His online handle was 144b (taken, he said, from the place he finished in his high school class), but many of the members of the group -- especially the women, and most especially the younger women -- called him "Uncle Bert," because he was just like everybody's favorite uncle, the one you hope will be there for every holiday dinner and who will tell stories for hours by the fire afterwards. He made a point of greeting everyone who entered the gallery when he was there, and I don't think he had a mean bone in his body. I'd be surprised if he had any enemies, anywhere -- with the possible exception of the woman who chased him around the Waffle House because he didn't want to marry her.

I was afraid something had happened when it had been two or three weeks and I hadn't heard from him, and no one had seen him capping at the site that we now frequent for quite a while (Caption This! is long gone, but has been more or less replaced by a site called Inventing Situations). A capper friend in Missouri wrote me to ask if I knew anything about his disappearance; all I knew was that email I had sent him was starting to bounce back to me, with the message that his mailbox was full. That was very uncharacteristic of Bert. My Missouri friend had his phone number; would I try to call him, she asked? (I think she was afraid that there might be bad news, and she didn't want to be the one to find out.) I tried a few times, unsuccessfully, over the course of a couple days. Then yesterday morning, someone picked up when I rang. A woman with a deep Southern accent answered, and when I asked if I could please speak to Bert, she told me that he had passed away from congestive heart failure on February 20th. I was floored, just absolutely hit with a ton of bricks. It turned out I was talking to his mother, and so I spoke to her for a little while about him and his life. She confessed to not even knowing how to turn on his computer, much less how to get in touch with any of the people he knew online. I doubt that she knew just how many friends he had all over the country through this medium. At one point I thought she said he was her "only child," but I've since read his obituary, and realize now that she must have said he was her "oldest child," as he had two brothers and what the obit called a "special sister" (not sure what that means). I was so grief-stricken that I had a hard time carrying on the conversation or hearing what she said after she said he was gone. She also said that he was "something special," and on that point, we were in complete agreement. He was special, all right -- special to me and to everyone in our extended online capping community. She told me that he had so many friends show up to the funeral that they couldn't all get in the church. She offered to send me a copy of the eulogy, delivered by an old friend from Bert's college days who is now a rabbi, and I am anxiously awaiting that.

He was only 43 years old, far too young to shuffle off this mortal coil so soon.

Once I got off the phone, I lost it altogether. I had to shut the office door, and I cried harder than I've cried in many years. All day, while I was supposed to be working, I kept breaking into tears every time I'd think about it. Then when I got home, it just got worse.

Mrs. G was off yesterday, and one of the projects she decided to tackle was to go through the mountain of printed up email jokes and letters and such that I've brought home over the years (not being particularly computer-savvy, she prefers that I just print the stuff up that I think she'll like so she can read it at her leisure), and throw most of it out. There were a few pages that she kept, though -- mainly Bert's stories that I had printed for her. She had been re-reading them all day as she went through the pile, and laughing herself silly all alone in the apartment. Then I got home and told her Bert was dead.

I'm still a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. One of my fondest dreams was that I would someday get down to that little town in Alabama and shake his hand, tell him how much I admired him, how much I enjoyed his stories and his humor, and maybe even get to see the Waffle House with him. That will never happen now.

I don't think anything could have prepared me for the emotions I felt when I first heard his mother say he had passed away. I felt like I had lost one of my dearest friends, a member of my own family. Today has been a little better, a little easier, but I don't think I'm all the way past the tears just yet. I am sure going to miss that guy, probably every day for the rest of my life.

To read what a few other members of the capping community have had to say about Bert, go here, here and here. To see just a few of his captions, to see what made us laugh so much, go here. And to see the site that he put up himself, go here.

So long, Bert, and thanks for all the laughs.