Dusty, where to begin my brother. Not a day goes by that I don't think about ya man. I've even caught myself picking up my phone to give you a call, only to come back to the realization that you're no longer here. I miss and love ya with all my heart man. I'm glad that you knew that.
With that being said, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on one of our earlier escapades. The year was 2006. After chatting on the phone for a bit, we spontaneously decided to catch the movie 300 at the IMAX. I remember distinctly that you had the bright idea to sneak some beers into to theater, which I was quickly board with. (Keep in mind, this was before they served alcoholic beverages in the theater.) So we go to the Kwik-E-Mart next to the theater only to find their stock was rather depleted. Seeing as how we were at Josie and 635, they had more than enough malt liquor. Begrudgingly, we agreed that we might as well get the most bang for our buck and purchased two Steel Reserve 40 oz. All seemed well until it was time to crotch them and head inside. Now this wasn't just any old bulge, it looked as though we both were suffering from the worst case of elephantiasis documented in the US. After a brief argument of how idiotic we looked and whether or not we'll get caught, away we went, waddling up to the ticket booth. "Two for 300 please." First step down. Now we headed inside where the real challenge awaited us...a pimply faced ticket taker. With one wave of the hand, you used the Jedi mind trick to temporarily distract him from observing the gigantic, protruding bulge we both shared standing before him. With solid eye contact, he calmly said, "To your left." Surprisingly, he didn't see the seemingly impossible not to notice protrusion and so onward we hobbled down the home stretch. Once we reached our seats at the top row, you poured us up two frothy cold ones in red solo cups you got from the gas station. As we enjoyed the sword and sandal cinematic and drank our high gravity malt liquor, a budding best friendship was well underway.
This was just a microcosm of countless memories we shared.