Best Friends Forever

Tyler and Jane asked me to make a short video as a tribute to Trip for our HS reunion this weekend. They shipped over like 6 hours of raw footage for me to work with that luckily for me, Jane had the foresight to digitize first. Going through all these memories has really put me through the ringer. Of course Brad insisted on watching all of the footage in its entirety under the reasoning that we needed to watch all of it to know what I wanted to use.

We laughed, a lot! I got to tell him a bunch of stories about my teenage years that I never really got around to sharing with him. We laughed some more. I took notes and began to pick out my favorite clips. By the end of our day long viewing party I had a pretty good idea of how this was all going to come together in my head. I proceeded to spend the rest of the night editing in my living room, and just as the sun was coming up I was finishing up my masterpiece. Our entire friendship was summed up in 2 minutes and 27 seconds.

I ended this video with Trip reciting his favorite quote, which I found oddly ironic yet completely appropriate for the occasion.

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Then he grabbed his stereo and started blasting “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies. It was sooo perfect and completely Trip in every which way it could possibly be!

This morning Jane flew in from DC and Tyler drove down from LA to check out what I’d done and get in some solid hang time. We watched it together and had a really good cry and for a moment it kind of felt like we’d lost our best friend all over again. But then the sad feelings kind of just left us as fast as they came and we felt better again. There was a moment today during all of our afternoon shenanigans where it dawned on me that in 40 years after we are done raising our families there's a huge chance we are going to come together and find ourselves doing the same exact things we are doing now. We've been friends for almost 20 years, and we are going to be friends forever!