My Main Man, Jackson Depew.

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I want to tell the story of the best apple I’ve ever had, the hole in the wall, and Jackson's involvement with it all. He was there, he saw it all happen. Forgive me Jackson, but this story has to be told.

So Jackson used to live in a place called the Bro Suite. Then he punched a hole in the wall of the Bro Suite. Now it’s known as the shithouse. This is when I met Jackson, more or less. I like to put that out on the table, because it’s funny. And I’ll spare you the gorey details, because I’m sure Jackson is pissed that I just posted that on the internet, but we later found out he also punched a big crack in his wrist bone, or something (his ego). Point is, he was an unlikely dawg indeed.

Anyways, we skip ahead to some generic Saturday morning in October, soon after Jackson's wrist had healed. I had vague plans to go rock climbing (story of my life). “superdawg, you still tryna climb?” Needless to say, the answer was yes. No coffee that morning, because all of a sudden, we meant play. After a ritual snicker/giggle sesh at the base of the climb, we racked up and sacked up. We swapped leads all the way up this totally awesome climb, laughing at the climber bros ahead of us the whole way (which climber bros?). At the ledge toward the top of the cliff, we enjoyed obligatory summit beers, gerbil food, and rebel yells before another snicker/giggle sesh that couldn’t be beat.

Forgive me for sounding like an asshole, but the stoke that day was super high. We had the stoke in us. We were the human manifestations of stoke. If stoke was the biggest strawberry you’ve ever seen, we were eating it with both hands, the delicious red blood stuck in our teeth. Yeah, how do you think it felt? It felt fucking good.

You know what also felt good? The apple. The best apple of my life. Remember when I said this was a story? The sun was setting during our last rappel. We decided that rather than hike out while we still had light, we should instead chilllll on a ledge and eat the apples we brought. I almost went home that night, skipping the apple altogether. Totally appleless. I think staying on that ledge was one of the best decisions of my life. I thought better than to take a picture of the sunset, because pictures don’t work like that. Neither do sunsets. But you better believe I got a picture of that apple. We were kings of the school living in a world completely made for us. And this time, I brought an apple for lunch.

Jackson isn’t the kind of guy to talk you out of anything. He’ll get himself excited about the stupidiest of decisions if he thinks you will benefit in the end. Once, I saw him high five every plant with a leaf on the way to class in the rain, just because I was having a bad day. The conditions were definitely not perfect that day, much like many days. And Jackson knows that. But I think where my wisdom stops and his starts is the total unrelenting amount of stoke he can muster up at any point of the worst day in history. And the best thing is, the conditions will be perfect no matter what the conditions are.

I almost stayed in bed that generic day in October watching shitty movies and reading edgar allen poe. So here’s to Jackson, a radical dude for sure. Thanks for your endless strawberries.

Riley.