Wednesday
in the summer of 2002, myself, Andrew and Kyle loaded a cooler full of Cokes and ice and a couple of lawn chairs and a frisbee. got in the car, and went to Grant Park. it was July 3rd. this is when the Taste of Chicago is going on. it’s a pretty big festival. lots of food, greasy food, pretty expensive.
we staked out some grass, a few sidewalks away from Lake Shore Drive. a good view of the harbor. and waited. we were early.
it was a long day. we drank all the Coke and played a lot of frisbee. ate a lot of food.
by 9 p.m., the place was bumping. I bet there was a couple hundred thousands of people in Grant Park that night. and me, and Andrew and Kyle. Kyle doesn’t talk much.
and all of us, we watched the fireworks.
I almost forgot about that…
Some good Frisbee, a heavy ass cooler, fireworks.
over all a great time.
I wish we had more. I wish there could be more.
Whenever I think of Kyle, I’ll alwasy think of the story of him and the Russian foreign exhange student who whouldn’t give out in the backseat of his car… “A little help here!?” And then when she told him it was that time of the month, 5 minutes later he was dropping her off at her house. God that was funny.
I think, in the end, he truly thought he was going to a better place where he could be happy. Say what you want about the doom and gloom that was Kyle most of the time, but as far as I can remember whenever he talked about his veiws on God and the afterlife, it was always an optomistic and pleasent picture. I hope he was right, I truly do.
I remember when we were in 7th or 8th grade, it somehow devolved to the point where Kyle and Nathan Gallagher were both trying to finish “Final Fantasy 7″ first. and it literally came down to an afternoon, and there were two camps of like-minded middle school nerds at their respective houses, and they were both battlin’ the final boss at the end of the game and they were talking shit to each other over the phone. someone should ask Neil or Ben about this.
I was at Kyle’s house, didn’t understand why everybody liked “Final Fantasy 7″ so god damned much. I think Nathan won by like five minutes.
I do believe he was one of the only people who didn’t participate in throwing everything into my pool when you guys would come over.
Ex. towels… my clothes(thanks Smith)… the chairs etc.