People on the Internet don't die. WTF?

Mystery Man, you can't not be here. I mean, you had such a young energy. Always giggling. Wearing those shiny shoes. I really liked your shoes.

We're mourning a man we don't really know, but we know him. He was the first high profile blogger to say, no, I did not enjoy BALLS OUT and I do not think it's clever. He was the first to bring us a play-by-play of the difference between Indiana Jones drafts and what could have been with The Crystal Skull. He knew how to start a great discussion. And how many pro writers give notes on Triggerstreet? He's been working on a free screenwriting book so we can all have his advice out there where anyone can get it. He didn't need to do any of this - he did it because he likes to help. What more do you need to know about somebody?

It would be nice to think this is a hoax and whoever Mystery Man really was has just decided he's tired of his Internet persona, but the truth is that we all know he's not that kind of guy. He left emails unanswered and his book unpublished. He didn't say anything like a goodbye. This is the kind of guy who would have said goodbye if he could have.

I hope that when I'm a pro screenwriter I have the energy to give back the way he did. He was a cool dude with cool shoes, something we should all aspire to be.

I grew up reading the old classics, like the classics that were classic when my grandma was young. Dickens was my favorite, but I also enjoyed Little Women, Wizard of Oz, the Bronte sisters, and then thrown in for good measure a silly teen novel or two to keep my head down to Earth.

It wasn't until grad school when I took a class on analyzing how writers write that I read my first Salinger story. Yep. I got all the way through grad school as an English major without ever reading Catcher in the Rye. I eventually read it a couple of years after I became an English teacher.

But Nine Stories. Oh, Nine Stories was a thing of brilliance. I know Catcher is supposed to be the big thing, but just like VS was my first encounter with Pearl Jam so I kind of love it better than 10, Nine Stories was how I discovered Salinger.

I didn't know you could have characters talk that way in a story. They cut each other off, they ran with complete non-sequitors, they made conversations about nail polish interesting. It's a wonder Salinger didn't make his career in theater. The man had a gift for dialogue.

He also had a gift for subtlety. "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish" is probably tied with Updike's "A&P" as my favorite short story of all time. Seymour Glass has all this incredible sadness, but he never has to say a word about it. In fact, he behaves quite the opposite by playing in the ocean with the little girl. You know his life isn't right despite his cheerful facade. How did Salinger do that? It's amazing.

I also always get a thrill out of how he'd get his titles from lines of dialogue in the story. For a while I did that too.

Remember when Stephen Colbert joked that he had Salinger as his guest the next day? I wasn't sure if he was serious, but just in case, I waited on baited breath to find out. I always thought Salinger would come out of hiding one more time, give one last interview where he could gift us all his wisdom as a writer before he left.

But he didn't do that. Instead, he hid his talent away in anger and pouted, just like Holden, and refused to risk anymore public failure. My great hope right now is that somewhere in a big room in his house is a massive stack of manuscripts he's been typing up all these years, pages and pages of brilliant dialogue for us to pour over now that he's gone and nothing can hurt him. If he kept that from us, too, I'm gonna be pissed.

I didn't cry when Kurt Cobain died and I didn't cry when Heath Leger died and I didn't cry any time in between. I didn't know these people so though I was sad, I didn't cry.

But this evening I cried.

I still remember the first time I saw Dirty Dancing. I convinced my parents to rent it. I think I was about 10 or so, and I watched it three times in a row. As soon as it ended, I rewound the tape and watched it over again. That movie made me want to pretend I could dance.

Patrick Swayze acted with his whole body. He was aware of every muscle and how it affected his performance. And have you ever seen anything more awesome than that Saturday Night Live episode when he and Chris Farley did that Chippendales dance off?

Then there's Road House. Who doesn't love Road House? And Ghost?

Hell, as I sit here I keep thinking about more roles I forgot about. Point Break, The Outsiders, Red Dawn.

I suspect he never had quite the career he wanted, and it probably didn't help how striking his resemblance was to Kurt Russell, but you could just tell Swayze was a good guy with a real talent.

Hell, he got more than most actors get. He got to recite a line all of us know instantly: "Nobody puts Baby in a corner." Do you think when he said that line, he knew how popular it would be? Do you think he knew how many times his performance during that final dance number would be copied, lampooned, or admired?

And even after the cancer diagnosis, he still worked his ass off to do one more project on A&E as a morally ambiguous cop. I watched the pilot. Not great, but okay, and bloody amazing for a man fighting cancer in his leisure hours. Most of us would spend our days weeping or traveling or pondering. He just wanted to work.

I guess now that I'm in my 30s I can look forward to this happening more and more - the death of someone who helped shape my childhood. I'll miss him in that weird way you miss someone you never met but smiled every time you saw.

Bye, Patrick Swayze.