Ode to Ross Darden

I am beginning a series on giving shoutouts to my good friends. These people are awesome and I don't know what I would do without them.

First up, Ross Darden, AKA Doss Rarden AKA The Big Cheese (that one's new).

Ross Matthew Darden, born on the glorious day of February 17, 1990 to Pat and Lynn Darden. Ross didn't necessarily have a normal childhood. At age 6 months, he cured cancer, however because he had the attention span of a goldfish, he was not able to share it with the world. By age 3, he mastered Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 on his Fisher-Price toy piano. At age ten, he began writing a series of books under the pen name, J.K. Rowling. Now on to junior high where I first became friends with this young prodigy.

In the 7th grade, I became friends with Ross Darden in Mrs. Durham's Texas History class. Little did we know that our young friendship would blossom into such a beautiful thing it is today. We became tennis doubles partners in the 8th grade where we wrecked shop on a regular basis. He also made Mr. Evitt, our Spanish teacher,  literally despise us with his endless fountain of sarcasm. My fondest memory with Ross was the day after we had both gotten braces put on our teeth and we drank HUGE slurpees in his tv room and we farted a ton and almost made Lynn (his mother) almost pass out when she came in the room. However, that night we had a feast of soft foods, it was glorious.  From there we move on to our high school years.

Early on in high school, our friendship became a distant memory, mostly due to the fact that Ross's addictions with cocaine and crystal meth had gotten the best of him (just kidding?). However, we were reunited once again on the tennis court as well as in Mrs. Johnston's computer class where I witnessed him single-handedly destroy a Midland Christian computer by playing his stupid, yes I said stupid, pyramid solitaire game. They even put that computer in a body bag and everything.  Our senior year, we had the pleasure of taking Mrs. Lalk again, this time in physics. That class brought joy to my life every single day because of Doss Rarden. I will never forget the day Mrs. Lalk actually told Ross to "shut up." After graduation, we've gone our separate ways..(cue opening theme song to Saved By the Bell: The College Years.)

After high school, Ross decided to attend GAYCU, whilst I attended the prestigous Texas Tech University. We were reunited once again the summer after our freshman year, getting the opportunity to work together at David H. Arrington Oil & Gas. We were "interns" which meant we did the most meaningless tasks ever and had "fun" doing it. The videos I have attached show how much "work" we actually did. Alas, school tore us apart once more after that summer, but we got to work together for half of the summer this past year, same company, same shananigans. That is all I have on this glorious man of fortitude. In a mere 3 days, I will be reunited with him once more and together, we will tear up the streets of the 806. Next time: Spencer Gill.