I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.
~Pietro Aretino~
Ah, mis amigos! Friends come in all types of personalities, shapes and sizes, creeds and colors, interests, and hobbies. And my friends are probably the most unique collection of characters that you can ever find. From the Goose to the Pooh Bear, from Doctor Jones all the way to the "Jewish German". From Skinny to "Ahnuld", from the Eminence Shoulder-Shake to the Jellico Chug-a-lug. From Jillbob, Nelpson and Carrie-butt, to the Manders Jo and the May Day Pay Day ... my friends definitely keep me going by being there, but more importantly making me laugh so damn hard!
Let's meet the crew!
Jamie
My dear friend, my girlfriend, my best friend. We met during the first days of my sophomore year at Georgetown. I was there early for football summer camp and she was there for soccer. There was a dance to welcome all students back to campus and I bumped into her on the dance floor on my way out the door. We started dancing and 2 and a half years later we're still together.
Alex
Think of the moodiest person you know, and then the laziest person you know, and multiply them by ten. Then think about the funniest person you know, then mulitple it by 100 and you have my best friend, Alex. We really became friends in freshmen English class in high school when we pissed the teacher off by thumb-wrestling from our seats ... thing was, we sat a row apart from each other! My greatest memories (not to mention the funniest) all have Alex in them. We played all the sports together, he was the quarterback, I was his reciever. He was a pitcher, and I was the centerfielder. I batted third in the line-up, and he usually knocked me in from the clean-up position.
I went to college on a football scholarship, he went on a baseball scholarship. Now, we both are going to law school. You never know, one day we might open up our own law firm together .. God help us.
Shawn
If in elementary or high school you went up to a random person and said, "Hey, have you seen Shawn?" They would probably reply, "Shawn who?" But if you asked anybody in the school where Pooh was, you had about a 99% chance of finding out. I have been friends with Pooh since the 4th grade. We have been through it all. We played baseball, basketball, and football together in grade school and went on together to high school and remained friends and teammates. He's a lefty, and a heck of a pitcher, and went on to Morehead State University on a baseball scholarship. I wouldn't doubt it if he was my kids' coach someday.
And I never doubted he would try to rid himself of the nickname "Pooh." So when I went to Morehead one day and asked one of his buddies where Pooh was and he said, "who's Pooh?" I knew he finally pulled it off.
Jessica
She was my grade school sweet-heart, my senior homecoming date, and we went to the senior prom together ...
We were and are great friends. I met her and her twin sister, Joslyn, on a swingset in the
4th grade and have been close ever since. We've seen friends and boy/girlfriends come and go but we've always been there for eachother. We've stayed in close contact ever since graduating high school, though never really seeing eachother face-to-face. We'll probably still be great friends at teh age of 80 if our spouses don't get too jealous. : )
Jason
Don't be surprised if you see this guy on C-SPAN some day arguing over health care reform or financial assistance to some third world country you've never heard of. He's the Wizard of Political Science, the Master of CNN Crossfire, and you can catch him listening to AM Political Radio in his car. But he's more famous for the various dances he makes and creates on the spot. The kid's got more soul then James Brown, and sings more than he talks.
Jason was my first real friend when I got to college and was my roommate during my freshman and sophomore years. Watch for him in several years when he runs for president and goes on The Tonight Show and does either his Vanilla Ice dance, his Lawnmower number, or his world-famous Shoulder-Shake routine!
Leroy
You see, I might be a lawyer some day. And chances are that this guy here will be my most frequent client. Meet Leroy, King of Jellico, Tennessee. Never met a beer he didn't like or a bar he didn't enter. He was the guy my freshman year of college who made everyone say, "agh, that guy definitely won't be back next year, he parties too much." Then my sophomore year, people always said, "eh, he won't
be back, he never goes to class." By the time my junior year came around, most people started shutting up and realized the Terror from the Jellico Mountains wasn't going away.
Leroy has provided some of the most interesting moments in my college career. The time he almost killed a parking attendant over the two dollar fee we didn't have, remarks to Kinsella like, "Chad, I can hear you getting fatter!" and his interesting views on illegal immigrants, homosexuals, and how to make a homemade bombs were always material for a good laugh.
Uncle Mose
He's really not my uncle, in fact we're not related. This guy showed up and was known only as Uncle Mose, but I soon found out his first name was Ashley, so I spared him the humiliation of having a girl's name and let the masculine nickname stick. But soon, as the years went on, he became my roommate and good friend. His relentless habit of wearing as little clothes around the apartment as possible sparked the nickname, "Ahnuld." You know, Ahnuld Swartzeneggar, for his humawngus bawf bawdy!
Mose played ball with me here at Georgetown and is going from knocking peoples' teeth out to someday fixing them. He's gonna be a dentist. Go figure.
Dayton
If you must know, yes, that is a 6'4" 270 lb. goliath humping a tree. Why? Because he is Dayton, and that is all you need to know. Dayton is a man of many faces. One day he is Doctor Jones, another day he is Big Desiel, and yet other days he is what Leroy calls a "networker." Some people have brown noses, but Dayton has been known to get his whole head a shade of it. There is not one professor who does not like Dayton, not one girl who doesn't go for the "Teddy Bear" effect.
But I swear if I come back into my kitchen one more time and find that Dayton has eaten all my food, this big networking Desiel is going to need a Doctor!
Carrie and Jill
These two lovely ladies deserve their own picture and bio, but since they don't provide me with pics, I have to resort to the only one I have of them at this moment ... lucky me it's of them both!
Jill's the chica on the left. We've been buddies since my sophomore year in high school. We share more personal jokes than anyone ... you know, Big Black Bulls and Free-throw kind of jokes (see? I told you you wouldn't get them .. they're personal). Jill's going to be either a doctor or a surgeon or even a wild safari jungle survivalist. She's the kind of person who studies and enjoys biology while at the same time dreams of jumping on a jet and taking off to hunt leopards in Africa.
The chica on the right is Carrie. While going through high school, Carrie was the closest thing to a sister that I had. I couldn't count the nights her and I grabbed a pizza then went and rented
a movie ... The Godfather being the best .... and The People Vs. Larry Flint being the worst (because I had to watch all the sex parts with her dad because Carrie and her mom got up and left). Carrie and I were an unstoppable tag-team at big JCHS, and after I left for Georgetown we stayed in great contact. We even worked the same summer camp the next summer. But wouldn't you know it, Carrie came to Georgetown after high school. Even though we're not the duo we were in high school, I doubt I could have made it at G-Town without her.
My best memory that includes the three of us would definitely have to be the time we laid out of class to go to the lake and I backed over that stop sign with my Blazer. After my high school graduation ceremony, their gift to me was a big dirty, rusty stop sign with a huge dent in it ...
Chad
Behold the Kinsella Dance!!! There is no dance like the Kinsella Dance, and there is no person like Chad Kinsella. He is so many things at once that it is hard to explain ... but the two words that 99% of people would say to describe Kinsella is GREAT GUY (the other 1% would be Leroy saying FAT GUY). He's as German as a Volkswagon. He talks of his Ohma (grandma) & her gettah (some German food he won't shut-up about), and he knows History like you would the events of your day. There's not a thing he wouldn't do for you and there's not a person who has a bad word to say about Chad ... that is except for Leroy ...
But don't think Kinsella is always the brunt of Leroy's jokes, scroll up and look at Leroy's picture for a second and come back down ....
Chad loves to call Leroy "Fieval" from the cartoon an American Tale, says he looks like a
mouse ...
There are so many stories that include Kinsella that I would take up half the memory of the internet to tell them all .. but THE FUNNIEST would have to be on spring break our sophomore year in Daytona Beach. We were all sitting around in our condo one morning and decided to go out to the beach. Kinsella had lots of History homework, so he decided to stay and read the whole time. "Kinsella?" I asked. "Are you gonna be OK?" And he held up some big fat book and a big fat bottle of Jim Beam and said, "Oh, don't worry, Ryno. I'll be fine. This book is good, and I have Jim to keep me company." We left for the beach and didn't come back for nearly six or seven hours. I walked in the condo and Kinsella was still sitting on the couch, reading. But alas, his drink was gone ... all gone. "Kinsella?" I asked. "Are you okay? I mean, you drank that whole bottle!" And he looked up from his reading, "I don't understand it, but I feel perfectly fine. I don't even feel tipsy." As everyone else was walking in the condo, Kinsella stood up to greet them. As he did, he immediately fell into the coffee table and wasn't heard from for about four hours ...
NOT YET PICTURED
(due to lack of photos)
Roger (he promised a pic), Chris, B-Brian, Nelson (promised a pic), Brent, Deven, Culver, Nick, Jim, Stew, Manda Jo (working on hers), etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc ect etc and many many more .... so don't get pissed if you're not in here, e-mail me, I'll put you in.
