Let me tell you about my friend Al.

Al and I went to college together, and I wanted to be his friend long before I actually met him. He always had a smile on his face and a crowd of smiling friends around him, and just gave an easy impression of openness and fun, like he couldn’t wait to meet everyone in the world and invite them to join his party.

I’m pretty sure I first interacted with Al when he hit me on the head with a frisbee. (And I know I am supposed to capitalize that last word, but it irks me to have to do so, so I SHAN’T.) To be bopped out of nowhere with one of these flying discs was not an uncommon occurrence on our campus, where something like 90 percent of the student population played on ultimate frisbee intramural teams, where the trademark whoop of our (very good) men’s ultimate team filled the air, and where one was forever wandering unknowingly into the middle of a round of frisbee golf.

I walked into one of Al’s games, and got bopped on the head. He ran over and hugged me, laughing and apologizing all at once. We became friends for real months or maybe a year later, when I was rooming with the girl he was in love with and several little groups of friends were becoming one big, sloppy, lovely group.

 Al was goofy and he was kind. He was the kind of guy who would spot you across campus, point at you, then head in your direction doing the Jim Carrey ape walk from … whatever movie it was that Jim Carrey did the ape walk in. When he reached you, he’d plop down and put his arm around you and want to know everything about your life.

Al played on the men’s ultimate team but also basically lived in the library. He was part of the Room Full O’ Dudes that always hosted our dance parties, and he was a splendid dancer. I remember boogying down with him in his dorm room and cutting a fine rug in our college’s ballroom, thanks to his able swinging lead, at the annual Midwinter Ball.

I must regretfully report that he also decided to nickname me Butt Nugget. Nugget, for short. I had made the mistake of being icked out the first time I heard him use that expression, so he gleefully made it my name. Ew, so gross.

Al was just — and I expect still is — one of the coolest, funniest, sweetest, goofiest, smartest, most driven people ever. I adored him, and am very sad that the years since college have found our paths crossing only twice: once, just after we graduated, when a group of our friends got together on Cape Cod, and again only fleetingly when he swooped in from med school to stand up at his best college bud’s wedding. He has become a very successful and fancy doctor; that best college bud recently told me that he’d even been wooed to a new city to do his fancy doctoring.

I hope he’s happy. I hope he’s the same Al as ever (I’m sure he is). And I hope he knows that if he ever calls me Butt Nugget again I’m going to tell all his patients to demand that he do the Jim Carrey ape walk every time he enters an exam room.

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