Pauly Starfox McNipplez

Paul’s words: My name is Pauly Starfox McNipplez, and I’m a legend in my own time. Well, I guess that’s for you to decide but as long as I’m writing the history book, that’s the truth. Just like how Columbus discovered America, and just like how Jesus was white, and just like how the twin towers fell from the jet fuel melting the structure. You get the idea. Anyway, I was born to Tom and Brenda Napholz on September 10, 1992 outside of Chicago where I would grow up and spend most of my years.

As a child, I had a very normal upbringing. Until about the age of 12, I spent just about all my free time either playing sports, watching sports, researching sports, or just wearing sport jerseys. I would have my mom drive me by all the local (and not so local) high school football fields. No matter what I was into, my parents were always supportive. Whether my mom was driving 3 towns over so we could simply look at a football field for 3 minutes, or my dad was striping off a football field in my backyard so we could play after he got off work. They were both very involved with my child hood, and there was never any question if I was loved.”

Anyone who knows Paul, can read that first paragraph and just smile. He saw a lot of absurdity in how our worlds have been depicted through history. I don’t know if I miss him more or am thrilled that he is finally at peace as we walk through the journey right now. I don’t think the history books will be kind to how this part of our history as a nation is evolving.

Paul’s childhood definitely helped form what was a constant for him-love of community and family. Tom and I bought our first house on a wing and a prayer in May 1992, just before Paul was born in September and we are still there.  It’s the house where my 1^st grand daughter spent a lot of time for the first two years of her life and my 2^nd granddaughter spends much of her time now. It’s a house that is filled with love and it makes me happy because it’s apparent that they feel that when they are here.

We were the 3^rd house built on our street as the subdivision was being built. As more and more houses were built, my neighbor, Laura, and her son, Nick, Paul and I went to almost every construction site with their toy hard hats and tool belts on. One by one, the houses filled with young families like ours. Our driveways were filled with stay at home moms, cozy coupe cars and a lot of kids the same age that played and enjoyed the best of suburbia. Paul remembered vividly the block parties of his childhood where streets were blocked off, blow up jumping houses were full of kids, food was shared and families looked out for each other’s kids while having fun.

Paul is the oldest brother by almost 4 years. Steve was born in May 1996 and Rob in March 1998. His younger brothers aren’t quite 2 years apart. In our family, it was Paul and the little guys. Paul had well deserved status. He was a quiet protector. They went through the natural stages of being brothers-Paul was a jerk to Steve when he was in middle school and Steve was a jerk to Rob when Steve went through middle school. Then they were both jerks to Rob for a minute. By the time they were all in high school and beyond, their love for fun and music prevailed and they made some really great memories.

When Steve was in 6^th grade, I remember him driving Paul crazy because he would “borrow” his skinny jeans and adopt them as his own. Being 4 years younger and obviously smaller, he looked like Bugs Bunny in the baseball uniform wearing Paul’s clothes. Steve didn’t care. Paul played all sports and while he showed talent and skill development in basketball and football, he chose to switch gears in 6^th grade and decided to play hockey. Steve didn’t share Paul’s passion for sports until Paul’s hockey years. In 3^rd grade, Steve decided to play hockey as well. Paul was playing catch up in a sport that required a lot of ice time. Steve had the advantage of his age and was a clear stand out in skating. It was a bond that they shared and they even played hockey together during Steve’s freshman year in high school and Paul’s senior year. Tom and I still laugh because Paul was the ultimate team player and had no problem if he was part of an assist in a hockey goal rather than scoring himself. Until Steve came along. What is it about brother’s and competition? Neither of them were known for being high scorers on the hockey team (to be fair, they played defense) but if one made a goal, damnit, the other one would follow suit.

The most common thread with all 3 boys is their shared love of music that their father fostered in them from the minute they were born. Each boy got their education on classic rock-and they could all sing Bohemian Rhapsody without missing a beat. They each ended up with their own style of music that they loved, but could all get together and play, listen or talk about any genre. None of them like country music-which is what I like and what is on most of my Spotify playlist. However, one by one, each of them (Tom included) would get ahold of my playlist and down load music on it for me that they thought I had a chance of liking and finding some common ground. Strange thing that happened with Paul and me once was on the drive home from Crystal Lake to Chicago where he lived. He played the Grateful Dead station on my Sirius XM. After I dropped him off, I tried to change the station to my country station, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it off of the Grateful Dead station. Every channel I went through stayed Grateful Dead. When I asked Paul about it, he seriously had no idea what happened. I’m sure it was some electrical glitch in my car because once I turned it off and back on again, it went back to normal. Very interesting to think about now as the Grateful Dead is one of 3 of my “go-to” music selections to feel connected to Paul.

Back to Tom. He shared his passions with the boys-music and sports-but he never forced his agenda on them. As he said, “I’m trying not to push him (them) in any direction -except the one he’s (they’re) going in.” He supported them in every interest whether it was striping off a football field or spending the entire weekend making them a hockey rink in the back yard that lasted one day, fishing 8 hours away with Steve, a Wiggles concert in the city or taking Paul and his friends to the city for one of their punk rock concerts. In the last two years before all concerts were cancelled, Tom and the boys made their annual trek to the Phish concerts. Every time Tom wears the Phish t-shirt the boys snuck off to buy him, I know it’s such a bittersweet memory for him.

I’ll post some of Tom’s Christmas letters for you in the writings section. They are actually very funny and very “real”. Tom found a way to put humor into a letter that he tried to find common ground with other parents and families in a fun way-never, ever bragging about anyone. He just didn’t like that. Check them out. I promise, you’ll at least smile. In the later years, when things got really hard, Tom and I collaborated on a few more Christmas letters but we just stopped eventually. I wish we would’ve kept them up and I wish we would’ve been able to be honest about the illness that my boys suffered and let them know that families can still learn to live and love each other through it. At that time especially, society was still not at a place in our history where people can recognize that substance use disorder is not a moral or parental failing.

Paul’s elementary school experience here was phenomenal on so many levels. Again, he was here at the best time for this neighborhood. It was a mini baby boom, there were very involved parents providing spectacular opportunities for connection and having fun. Opportunities for sports involvement couldn’t have been better. He truly did have the best teachers and coaches throughout his experience at that time. Mrs. Rubin, Mrs. Sites, Mrs. Kelley, Mrs. Freund. If your family went to Woods Creek, you know what I’m talking about. Betsy Les had a way of finding the best teachers and Paul in particular was blessed with teachers that were perfect for him. I still have the “Walter Payton Award” that Mrs. Kelley gave to Paul. She knew Paul so well and his sense of fairness and integrity never changed-even when he was in a world that was so far from there.

By the end of 5^th grade, Tom and I spent some time talking to his teacher and for some reason, there was a disconnect in Paul getting his assignments copied correctly in his assignment notebook. That is a simple way of putting it that his grades weren’t reflecting his intelligence. Paul was the kid who memorized and could recount something he heard verbatim, strong in math, reading and comprehension was very high, but something was missing. After talking to a friend who was experiencing something similar, I took him to be tested at the same place she tested her son. I still have the results and have shared them with Paul over the years. In a series of tests and conversations with Paul, they discovered that his IQ tested in the gifted category on 3 sections-verbal comprehension at the highest you could get. However, he scored far below an average mean for processing. She laid out options for him to be successful at school and basically at 5^th grade predicted how as his education got higher, he would excel because it played to his strengths. She was exactly right. And he showed that in the last 3 years of his life as he enrolled in Harold Washington College in the city of Chicago.

You’re all probably looking at this and thinking I’m romanticizing Paul’s childhood. I’m not. I’m pretty literal about most things. Anything I’m dramatic about, usually I’m joking. My nieces and nephews have each spent a lot of time in the summers here and they all were drawn to this little mecca of Americana. It was wholesome and pure. And never did we think that our world would become what it did. The “why” is something we can only speculate about because I don’t know if we will ever truly know that answer. I guess we can just look at the story and take what we want and need from it.

Paul’s words, “Once I hit about 6^th grade, I started to feel not only discontent with myself, but how the world worked in general.”

Middle school was a tough time on a lot of levels. I just spent a lot of time telling you the lengths Tom and I went to help him succeed in school. His 6^th grade teachers were great. I sent the testing to them. Talked to them about the recommendations from the testing. One of them was for him to have access to a keyboard so he could type as he listened. For some reason, this helped him to overcome the processing issue. She was right. Paul could type faster than anyone I knew in his generation. Paul, however, didn’t want “special accommodations”. He didn’t say that. He just didn’t ask for the keyboard and he didn’t advocate for himself to do better in school. I don’t think it was deliberate. I just think it wasn’t important to him.

6^th grade, he had a good relationship with his teachers and when they talked to him about the fact that they didn’t think he was taking school seriously and they thought he was acting “too cool for school”, it bothered him. He said, “I didn’t know I was doing that.” And he made the changes they asked of him. Tom and I didn’t need to do anything. His 7^th grade English teacher, Mrs. Stewart. God, I love that woman. She was so perfect for Paul. Sadly, mid-school year, her husband became ill and eventually died. She was gone for the majority of the year. However, she came back before the end of the year because in her words, “I kept seeing the emails from the parents and I just couldn’t stay away”. Her long-term sub wasn’t exactly “motivated” to be with middle school kids is my best guess. For Paul, she sucked. Sorry. It was really bad. When Mrs. Stewart came back, she addressed the problems the substitute mentioned and then looked her directly in the eye and let her know that she read a student who was motivated by reading and expressing himself in writing, completely wrong. It was a great moment for Paul to see an adult stand up for what was right and express herself appropriately without hiding behind politically correct “CYA”. For the most part, any earth-shattering moments of leadership pretty much ended there for Paul at Lundahl. He had plenty of teaching moments-like how to work within a structure he did not agree with. Those stories, his friends can tell.

Again, Paul was a really interesting kid. He had another teacher that was pretty awful to him his 7^th grade year. The interesting thing about that was Paul hated the teacher and the fact that he used his position to bully. However, Paul said to me more than once “the man can teach”. He hates the guy, but gives him credit? The subject was history and social studies and he loved the way the teacher presented the material. The only advanced level classes Paul chose to take in high school were history classes. When I mentioned he could take U.S. History in the summer so he didn’t have to take it during the year, his answer was, “why would I do that? It’s the only class I like.” Honestly, until the end of Paul’s junior year, high school was actually a really good experience. Great teachers, he was involved in hockey, the French club, went to France with them-all good stuff.

He was definitely rebellious as a teenager in an “I’m pushing the bullshit buzzer on you if you’re lying to me.” But he wasn’t rebellious to where he felt like he needed to get in your face. He was academic and a student always-he loved to learn.   But he spent his energies on the things he thought were important and he pretty much did what he needed to get through the structures of his education. I’m not even sure if that makes sense and maybe I’ll go back and try to depict that better. He was just a really interesting kid. He had the “fuck you” in him, but not for the wrong reasons.

Paul was also Punk Rock Paul from middle school through high school. Tom and I told him he could have a mohawk as long as he didn’t walk around with a chip on his shoulder. He didn’t. Actually, I think his happiest years as a teenager were the Punk Rock Paul years. There’s a message there for us as parents. We get scared when we see our kids drawn to something that we don’t understand or that we perceive as deviant. Paul was drawn to the punk scene for every reason any punk rocker is. They have anger. Paul had a lot of anger and it was a great expression for him. There was a point at the end of high school that Paul was wearing his hair short, wearing blue jeans (instead of those crazy plaid pants) and regular t-shirts. I also remember knowing in my heart there was something I couldn’t pin point that was wrong.

His initial entrance into the world of drugs was not to fit in, but to be different. And he hit the bullshit buzzer on some of the education he received in school when it came to drugs, specifically weed. I’ve stated before that I still believe that he “would’ve figured it out” and that the drugs wouldn’t have taken so many years of his life if it hadn’t been for some events that all collided at the same time at the end of his junior year. I’m going to save that for another post. But, in the way of Paul’s Zen:

“And so, if living in regret is not allowing a moment to exist as it was supposed to be

How can I expect in the spirit in which I dwell to exist as it was meant to be.”