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STAPLEGUN_WARRIOR

                                             July    7, 2009
                                             August 19, 2013

     Intelligence and independence,

     That strange, prickly character,
     a melange of firey inconsistencies       WILDMAN
     that seemed to make him interesting
     to people.

        One of my best friends,
        I suppose..., my roomate
        for many years in college.


        I'm afraid I'd have to say he
        had more *respect* for me than       He thought my own
        I did for him... He got stuck        touches of weirdness
        in something like a teenage          were *really* impressive...
        rebel mode, when I was going
        in another direction.                   Like, one time, late
                                                at night at a party
        I mean, sleeping late and               at a friends place
        skipping Metcalf's physics              (Big Walter's).
        lectures...
                                                There were an incredible
        What are you *doing* in                 amount of goopy desert
        college?  What are you doing            cakes at this affair --
        on the planet?                          (Big Walter's dad was
                                                a baker.)
           (His comment on me
           during that period:                  Sitting across the table
           you study more than                  from the Staplegun Warrior,
           a Chinese student!)                  I was getting tired, and
                                                more than a little bored
                                                as we talked about
                                                something or other, and
                                                I looked down at the
   One of the old stage crew                    half eaten cake on the
   gang, trying to hold on to                   table in front of us and
   his sense of self-respect,                   suddenly jammed a hand
   and get through life without                 down into it, picking up
   compromise with the bastards.                a fistful of it, licking
                                                it from between my fingers.
       Rather than making
       it as a physcist, he                        He thought this
       ended up working as                         was outrageously
       an accelerator                              funny, and
       operator at Stony                           followed suit.
       Brook and later
       Fermilab; with a
       growing passion for
       skydiving --

       Which ended his life
       young, in his mid-20s.     He had gravitated toward
                                  hanging out with another
                                  wild-man type.  One day
                                  when they were both
                                  skydiving, I gather this
                                  guy recklessly opened
                                  his chute at the wrong
                                  moment-- possibly my
                                  friend was moving toward
                                  him unexpectedly-- and
                                  they collided, knocking      (This was back
                                  both of them unconsicous.    before baro-
                                  The one who opened,          metric triggers
                                  survived, the one who        were in common
                                  didn't died.                 use.)

                                     Not long before that
                                     I'd heard another
                                     sky-diver ranting
                                     about how that
                                     particular wildman
                                     was a complete asshole:
                                     "If you want to shave
                                     your own odds, that's
                                     fine, but you don't
                                     shave someone else's
                                     odds."




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