ron

he was a friend of a friend, another warm body needed to fill the male quota. he was also the only dude on our team with less athletic skill than myself, so I liked him from the start. the fact that he was a genuinely nice guy didn’t hurt his cause. 

our first season - freshman year - he managed to fuck up zero times while not making any significant contribution to the team. this is no small feat when you’re playing intramural  co-ed air force rules flag football. usually whilst drunk. and stoned. though by the looks of Ron during that fall of 1995, “stoned” was the last thing you expected.

then season 2 came around.

I can’t even recall if he played that year. the two things I take away are that we won the league championship and that Ron had discovered jam bands. he had morphed from clean-cut/small-town/chaste to dread-locked/quasi-showered/crunchy in the matter of what I could only presume was a very fucking interesting summer vacation. it was like the freshman 15 deconstructed; replacing 5am beer and pizza binges with hash brownies and a dubbed cassette of Trey singing through a megaphone during the verse of “Fee” at Patriot Center in ‘94 (October 8th, to be exact).

the team all but disbanded after season 3, Ron a microcosm of our vagrancy. every once in awhile I’d see him wandering aimlessly out and about; his hair dread-ier, his IPA paler, his essence crunchier. he always looked to be moving full speed ahead in the opposite direction of where he’d begun. 

I realize now I never knew his last name or else I’d troll him, though I’m fairly certain he’s an investment banker now. or a semi-pro ultimate frisbee player. probably both.

miss u, Ron.