R.I.P. Billy Mays

I'm very saddened by the news that Billy Mays was found dead this morning at his home. There's been several celebrity deaths lately, but none of them really saddened me much, but I've been a big fan of Billy for a long time and his death has thrown me for a loop.

During my first year of college, my roommate and I both suffered from extreme insomnia and would stay up all night every night watching infomercials. We'd watch the same ones over and over again mainly because there was nothing else on TV at 3 a.m. and because we were so broke we couldn't afford to go party. Watching infomercials became our favorite hobby, even spilling over into the daytime. My roommate even became very good at imitating the infomercial hosts.

So naturally, I became amazed by Billy Mays immediately after I started seeing him in commercials. He was fascinating to me. I always thought he would make an awesome father. (He was the same age as my mom, so that wasn't a stretch at all). My own father was so abusive and an asshole that I used to wish all sorts of people were actually my father, but Billy was the main one I wished was. That got even worse when my younger brother and my mom became big fans of Billy. My mom once said that she had a little crush on him, so that just made me think about him as my dad even more.

I started dreaming about Billy being my father every time I saw an OxiClean commercial right before I fell asleep. In the dreams, either my mom would reveal to me that she had cheated on my dad and that Billy was actually my biological father, or that my mom would meet Billy sometime when she was on vacation now and they'd fall in love, get married, and he'd become my new stepfather. Either way, I'd have this new great father who loved me and wasn't abusive toward me.

So you can see why I'm so sad about his passing... RIP Billy Mays.