Before I begin, I must be up front with you: I thought this was a good idea while I was dead drunk. It's more than likely not a good idea by now, but I told enough people that I was "so doing this" that I can't really back down from it. I don't really believe any of that is going to save my reputation as a human being and inhabitant of the planet Earth, but hell, it was worth a shot.
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I have known the individual referred to as Timothy King for three years, two of which I have been aware of. Our first encounter happened in one of the many corridors of Stoke Hall, the largest dorm and overall biggest shit factory on the University of New Hampshire campus. It was in the wee hours of May 6th, 2006. I was preparing to leave for class with one of my acquaintances at the time (I have no recollection of who this particular person was. If you are the person in question, please contact me so I may replace "one of my acquaintances" with your name.)
As we were about to leave, a door swung open, and a burly, fire-maned presence shot out into the hall... and continued to stumble into the wall opposite him. This presence, at the time very foreign to me, continued to stumble back and forth until he disappeared down the long corridor. This was, of course, a prime opportunity for the hypothetical college boy to prove how hypothetically fucking cool and clever he is. "There goes a fucking champ," was the best my acquaintance could muster. To put it bluntly: fail. However, the burly ginger had, if only momentarily, piqued my curiosity.
Love at first sight? Who knows? To be perfectly honest, I seriously fucking doubt it, but who knows?
A year and small number of months later, during my third year of study at UNH, I haphazardly ran into this firey (I'm not trying to make puns at this point) presence again, at the Holloway Commons dining hall, the heart and soul of the entire campus. In my travels, I had befriended a ginger (this will be the stock term for pale, red-haired individuals from here on) of a very different, quieter nature: one Brett Bauer. This particular morning, I was eating a pretty typical Saturday morning breakfast with Brett. Halfway through my post-Fruity Pebbles cup of coffee, the distant-but-familiar presence passed by and gave an abbreviated greeting to other, quieter ginger. I'm not about to insert a "birds of a feather" joke here, but you can guess as to what I was thinking. I politely asked "who's that?" I then heard a name that would come to entail a lot more very, very soon: Tim King.
Key moment? Yes.
I'm a bit hazy on the details, but less than two weeks later, I found myself wandering Durham, New Hampshire with a very intoxicated Tim King. It was during this escapade that I realized Timothy was not only the aforementioned "fucking champ" from three years past (seriously, I was blown away by that alone,) but apparently my mirror image in general preference on more or less everything. I knew I had forged a powerful bond that evening, but even as he slept on the hard, unvacuumed tile floor of my single dormitory, I could not fathom the turn my life would be taking.
No. We didn't touch weiners.
You'd just be surprised at how much your schedule changes being tethered to, and eventually rooming with, a gigantic personality with a propensity for heavy drinking. Sadly, I didn't have this idea idea in the past 18 months, where many adventures have already occurred, but I have a strong feeling that the adventures have yet to cease. I have decided to monitor my good friend's life and its effects on my own, in hopes that everything from his most harrowing exploits to the most daily of his habits do not go unwritten. This is my life as the sidekick, the "straight man," but also as the scribe, the watcher. This is the Kinger and I.
-Robert "Bob" Pearsall
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