My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf: Some Thoughts.
In high school - in life - there’s that one kid who slips through the cracks. In some instances, everyone barely notices this kid. In others, the kid draws attention to himself by being a class clown or indulging in some form of carnival geek routine that inspires laughter. Whether people are laughing with him or at him doesn’t matter to the kid - so long as he’s being noticed. By the end of senior year, that kid’s class cycles out of high school, and disseminates to various colleges or job prospects. But what about that outlier? Sometimes he’ll be brought up in conversation. “Yeah, what about that guy? What happened to him?” Some people have leads. Other people can only speculate. Still others make up stories about the kid that are the stuff of urban legend. These days, one of the crowd will joke, “He probably became a serial killer / mass murderer / child molester, and we’ll see him on TV.” For Jeffrey Dahmer - the weird o...