...Because I'm A Scientist!

Note: This is one of the hardest things I have ever written on here. I'm not normally the type to outwardly speak of things like this, but it's something that I personally need to do.

How can you quantify one's life in a simple sentence? Is it an impossible endeavor? Or merely a monumentally difficult task?

I sit here tonight, jaw still agape from the day, trying to decide if this idea is possible. If there is a concise way to explain the entire being of one particular person.

Throughout high school I was luckily enough to find someone who not only shared in my unique sense of humor, but thrived in it. While others discussed the most recent football game or newest video game at lunch, we would launch off into philosophical discussions ranging from the intricacies of the newest KoRn album to the current world economic situation.

And when you're fifteen years old, that's a helluva strange topic span.

We survived two semester of Spanish together by plotting our eventual 'takeover' of the country. For instance we decided to sell Maine to Canada for a case of Labatt Blue, build a wall around Iowa and declare it a biohazard zone, and build matching old English style castles in the hills of San Francisco.

Once during a biology field trip we unwittingly toppled over a 20+ foot tree in the middle of the woods. The first concert either one of us went to found us wondering the side streets of the city, stumbling upon sights our young eyes had never quite imagined.

Throughout high school we had this plan of constructing a trebuchet designed to launch ourselves into a lake. Our physics professor at the time declined to help us, seeing as we were underage, but periodically over the years we would figure out the mechanics behind the overall design.

As high school ended, our trebuchet plans were put on hold due to time and money constraints. When I talked to him this past summer, he quipped that we had the time, he just needed for me to finish pharmacy school so we'd have the money to finally build the damn thing.

We jokingly discussed renting and arriving to our ten year reunion in a jet black helicopter, just to make people talk.

Now we will never finish our trebuchet... never shock our class by arriving in our jet black helicopter.

Hell we were supposed to retire to the same nursing home and proceed to blow it up via experiments from Bill Nye and Mythbusters. Assuming we survived from launching ourselves in our trebuchet that is.

From now on, each day is now a little dimmer, little less joyous,

Which comes back to my original question, how do you condense one person's life to a simple sentence? The thing is, for every person that sentence will be different.

I'll never forget the pride he showed after receiving his first job after graduating college. His new line, whenever someone asked why he did something, always ended "...because I'm a damned scientist."

And for me, that's about as concise as you need to get.

Godspeed Roy.

You were one of the best friends I have ever had and we had more fun than two people should ever have together. My life will never be quite as complete as it once was.