The event of my death.

I died once.

I got hit by a truck, and I got thrown onto its hood. My head embedded into the windshield. My face was all cut and bruised, and blood was everywhere. I lay perfectly still as a crowd gathered around the truck, which had made its way onto the sidewalk near UGA's Soule Hall. The last part of me that moved, as a pretty blonde girl stood over my mangled body and cried, was my left leg, which had gone into spasms as the life drained from my body.

A stream of blood ran down my arm thick onto the pavement.

"Oh Jeremy," the girl cried. "NO-O-O!"

Then, my episode of the local-access college-station soap opera, titled "Roomers," then faded to black.

I got credited as a Special Guest Star because my character got introduced and died in the very same episode.

I played "Jeremy Williams," a visiting, snooty exchange student to UGA from the French Riviera. In the episode, I showed up to visit a friend of mine, which made her boyfriend jealous (even though I was clearly gay), and I died after pushing the boyfriend out of the path of a drunk driver.

It was actually my idea to show up on the show, then die. People'd actually been watching the show that year, and I knew the creators of it. So I suggested to them that I come on and die in one episode, like I'd seen a character do on one episode of "Knots Landing."

The show's directors loved the idea, actually, and wrote me as "Jeremy Williams" into the script. It took two days to film the whole episode, and my death scene was this elaborate, nighttime shot involving the beat-up pick-up truck on the sidewalk and me covered in lots and lots of Caro syrup dyed red. Using Saran Wrap on the inside of the windshield, the director was actually able to make it look like my head had gone through it. It was completely cool.

The director, also, had given everyone this somber "pep talk" before filming the shot where I got hit by a truck. They advised no one to laugh and told everyone to concentrate on something really, really sad.

When I did that, they told me that I could still be upbeat since the only emotion I had to show in the scene was "dead."

The whole thing came out badly acted, overdone and completely comic.

The episode, which also featured a fistfight, a suicide attempt, a character's overdose and a stalker attack (because it had to be fun and campus-relevant), ran during finals week that year, and it aired about 500 times. It was a huge hit.

During finals week, about a dozen people stopped me and asked me about my death, calling it "hilarious."

I called Jenipher in her room after I caught it the first time, since I knew she watched "Roomers."

"Did you see it?" I asked. "What did you think?"

"Oh ... I've already seen it," she said to me plainly. "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?"

"I thought it would be fun," I said.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, it was fun," Jenipher said. "But WHY???"

"Did you laugh when I died?" I asked her.

"Um ... yes," she said. "It was SO melodramatic."

"So I die ... AND YOU GO AND LAUGH ...," I said, pretending to be offended.

Going home after finals, I showed the tape of my death scene to my mother, and she actually gasped in horror at my blood-splattered face. Watching it and her reaction, I doubled over in laughter.

But it didn't end there.

When I turned 21, I was walking up the steps at Washington Street Tavern to get another free drink when these two girls stopped me.

One was Allison, my friend from German class.

"Hi Benjie ... how are you?" Allison asked me.

As I prepared to answer Allison, though, her friend got a good look at me and started screaming at me, "OH MY GOD ... JEREMY, YOU'RE ALIVE!!! ALIVE!!!"

Allison turned toward her friend and, looking embarrassed, said, "No ... this is Benjie. BENJIE."

"NO, IT'S JEREMY!!!!" her friend shouted.

"It's OK," I told Allison. "I know what she's talking about. She saw me on TV."

Allison looked puzzled, then headed down the steps with her friend. I went to get another free shot.

Months later, at jury duty, I ran into Higgins, a high school friend of mine, and he asked me how much partying I was doing at UGA.

"Not much," I told him calmly. "I don't get into much trouble."

Then, as I talked to him, this couple walks up to me and goes, "Excuse me ... we just saw you across the room. Were you that dead guy on 'Roomers?'"

Higgins raised an eyebrow.

"Um, yeah," I said humbly, looking at Higgins.

"OH MY GOD ...," the couple said, all excited. "We KNEW that was you. That was a GREAT episode!!!"

Higgins just watched me and chuckled.

"Um, it's nothing," I explained to him. "I died on a student soap opera."

"Yeah," Higgins said smugly. "It sounds like you lead a real boring life in Athens ..."