This Being Tony

Enjoying my day off, I got a call from my old college roommate, Tony. We lived together during freshman year in college. That will forever be our bond. We had been friends in high school and decided that living with strangers would suck. To make the transition to college easier, we agreed that living with someone you already knew would be one less thing to worry about.

The year was fun and we managed to live completely different social lifestyles. We always got along and every few nights would be like a slumber party. We'd just lie on our respective ends of the dorm room and talk about everything under the stars. We have only seen each other a few times since that year. Every time we get together, the classic inside jokes come back as if we never stopped living together. The guy's living habits would occasionally drive me nuts...but I wouldn't trade that experience for anything in the world. It was good to see Tony...it's good to see figures from the past.

I don't have a picture of the guy. We lived together before the digital age...but I might as well roast him like I have the other "this being" subjects. I'll list the top five things that come to mind when I think of Tony.

- The episode we quoted the most on the Simpsons featured the line: "I think he's talking to you." That line came up tonight.
- He coined the campaign phrase "Vote Lo and Get Some!" when I ran for Senior Class Vice-President. He even convinced me to use it.
- He respected my religious boundaries and didn't try to make a conversion. I really appreciated that.
- Sometimes he'd wake up, crawl out of bed, and slam a can of Mountain Dew. Wow.
- In High school, I had a crush on this girl for quite a while. It was a sad case where I was too shy to talk to her and couldn't come up with a convenient way to get to her. At one point, she had a crush on me. Tony knew this...but was jealous because he liked her, too...so he withheld that information from me. Thanks, dude.
- Another time in High School, this new girl came to school. She was tall, had long cherry red hair, long legs and a smile that could bring down any man. On the first day of she came to school. I met her and got a total positive vibe. Two minutes later, Tony says to me: "So, are you going to go after this girl like you do all the new girls at school?" At the time I had given up on the girls at school and just went after the new ones. I wanted to spite him, so I said "Hell No!"...and I dropped my interest and moved on. It turned out that she did like me...and I blew her off. Once again, Tony...thanks, dude.

. . [~] . 0 (Grumble) Grumbles .