Remembering Dan

I’ve been friends with Dan since high school.  Although often separated by geography, we stayed close through visits to our respective schools, get togethers over the holidays and summers and of course the world wide web.

Dan gave love to his friends more freely than most. He would often literally run over to my house moments after I’d fly to CA from DC or he’d flown home from Illinois.  He walked me home countless nights, unperturbed by my relatively ridiculous fear of nighttime Palo Alto streets.  He brought me gifts from his travels, he came over to help me pack for college orientation.   I can hear Dan saying “I love you” over the phone like it was yesterday, and I have countless pictures of him hugging our friends tightly. In high school he and I made lists of people we’d like to get to know better.

I remember being enamored with his stories and adventurous ideas.  Dan could make anything fun, and many of our best times were walking around Palo Alto while he chattered about something new he had learned about.  He once told me in high school that he thought he was running out of stories, but that didn’t last long.  On prom night senior year our dates went to bed and Dan and I and another friend stayed up all night telling stories and analyzing our world.  He wandered over to my house one holiday break to inform our friends of his philosophy on religion’s effect on society and soon after we discussed the fourth dimension.  One summer he explained why he was going to invest in solar energy.

We had great adventures together.  We went up to see Franz Ferdinand in San Francisco, his first “indie” concert, while still in high school.  We fumbled through navigating  the city and we laughed and laughed as we tried to stomach our way through the black coffee we ordered at a fancy restaurant.  Driving home from visiting friends in Santa Cruz we sang at the top of our lungs the entire way. We stayed up late watching “Classic Arts Showcase” and listening to music until our parents wanted us home.  We turned a math project into a whodunit complete with a trench coat and corn cob pipe.

In my senior yearbook, Dan lamented that we had only just become close friends but then wisely said “but at least we had that and so I guess we are lucky.”  Dan had an amazing brain and heart and I miss him very much.