“Pyro go!… No wait! Shit!”
Yeah that happened, we laughed and shook our heads about it, but I’m not thinking about that right now. Right now, I’m loading up another game on my phone and focusing on being a badass. It’s just a silly cell phone game that I play when I have nothing better to do or when I don’t want to focus on the things I should be focusing on. It loads, I start an easy one on one match. The kind I never lose. In a few minutes I’ve lost the round. What the hell.
“Mam, I’m just a big gay cowboy so maybe I don’t know anything but I don’t believe you want to bring a live bull into a ballroom”
Yep I remember that conversation all too well, years later we were still laughing about it and about the effect a mechanical bull has on a 300 pound, angry woman when they decided that would be a better idea. It made the saddest sounds and could barely spin. The sound of her splatting onto the mat could be heard across the ballroom. I’m not thinking about that now either. Now I need to load another round and freaking win one.
The game loads, this one looks even easier, a minute later I’m wondering what the went wrong this time. I should have won this and here I am looking at the “you lose” screen. I suppose it doesn’t help that I don’t remember the game at all. I’m not sure I even tried to play.
The phone is somewhere on the other side of the room now and I suppose I have to admit something is wrong. Something is missing from the world tonight. Scott, why did it have to be you this time.
Scott ran audio for my company, and he was one of the best. He worked harder than most. Always wanted to make the show better and had a way of telling you that you were wrong in such a way that made you want to thank him for the education. You could always rely on Scott and you knew he was someone you could trust when the shit hit the fan, even when it came from that damn bull that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
He was an audio guy, did some project management, and always did the best he could do, no matter what he was doing. Most people who knew him refereed to him as Truck Stop and he often as not referred to himself as a Big Gay Cowboy more for the reaction than anything else. He wasn’t perfect, in fact he had a few opinions about the world that made me wonder why I even hung out with him after work, but I did. Why? Because Scott always tried to do the right thing, no matter what. Scott was honest, even when that wasn’t the easy thing to do. Like many of us, I loved him for that.
There was a side to the man that not everyone got to know. He was a tech guy but he lived in the country. He had someone he loved more than anything and a life that he was happy with. He felt things with a depth that he didn’t show often but I remember him telling me about the idiot cop that pulled him over for swerving a little one night thinking he was drunk. Scott never drank, smoked, or used drugs and was proud of that. Scott was swerving because he was crying. His horse had just died that day. In fact after a little time talking about it he was crying again. He’d cursed that horse for dropkicking his laptop, been exhausted with it when it got sick, but when it passed away a part of him went with it.
What makes a real man? Being able to cry over the loss of your damn horse with your head held high and defy anyone to say more than “dude, I’m so sorry about horse” I know that’s exactly what I said I held up my beer in salute and we talked about other things.
In our industry we all
have to have a kind of closeness, and many of us are like family.
However there are only a few that I’ve been proud to call a friend and
Scott, you have been one of those few for more than 16 years. You’ll be
sorely missed.
Fuck cancer,
We’ll see you down the road.
Now where the hell did my phone land.