3.31.13

Seven years later doesn’t make it any better. Every time I think about it, which I’ve conditioned myself not to, it makes me wonder what could have been. Maybe the band we were in had run it’s course, maybe we were never gonna be rock stars, but we were all going to be together in Columbus, what a fleeting feeling now.

What is there to say after seven years? Who knows. I like to think I’ve done something with myself that he would at least find acceptable, low as it might be. The thing I know is he never would have turned on me, never seen me as lower than him, we sweat the same battles on the soccer field, in college, in the band, in life.

I wonder what he would have thought of this coronavirus too, like anyone, we have no reference point. He would probably find a clever one though, or one that would justify more than 10 of us meeting to drink together, scientifically of course. He wouldn’t have been scared to do what he did, and defend the public like he could.

We all have a million stories about how Andrew Tarek Katbi affected our lives, so I’ll tell you mine. We were in a huddle as a soccer team before a game, and our brilliant coach John Munoz finished his speech saying this, “Here’s the captains band, and this is how we do it, I don’t pick it you do.” He then threw the armband down in the middle of us.

It was a tenuous second, maybe a second and a half before Andrew bent down, picked it up, and handed it to me. I like to think everyone had that opinion, but I could be wrong Nobody wanted to win more than him, so if this helped us, fuck-em-all lets go. That’s how I became captain of The Delphos Legend, and that’s how Katbi will live forever.

To all of my non-existent readers out there I’m sure you’re balls-deep thrilled about the fact that I’m going to California. The part that I have neglected to tell you about is who I will be traveling with. Luckily for you, WordPress has given me an unlimited amount of words to describe this asshole, so here goes.

I met Zach at Discover Financial Services in 2014 and in our training class I wasn’t too sure what to think of him. There was then a day when we both started trying to kick a ball of paper into the same trash can at which point soccer came up, and as they say, the rest is a silly, tragic, fun, drunken, unfortunate and fortunate bit of history.

‘You’re for Manchester United?’ ‘I’m for Manchester United.’ What about 200 miles of us growing up in vastly different places couldn’t separate was the beautiful game. The only unfortunate part was that he was a Seattle Sounders fan, and I’m still working on that.

We were inseparable at work from that point on, they asked us to to Q and As with training classes because of our charisma together. We had no offense to addressing the trainees, and we were the best of our class.

Fast forward to my new job that I excelled at for the first few months, and about the same time I’m failing at this new job, Zach calls.

The mother of his child had moved all of her things out of the house he rented while he was at work.

I brought a case of beer and all of my condolences. But that was just a start.

This part is none of my business, so I leave it out.

I was hospitalized for bipolar and Medicated.

Medicated Justin was not who I wanted to be. I took myself off Risperdol in 2016

One of the great things I decided to do while in the hospital that I boned up on was getting season tickets.

We did.

For 2016 Zach and I went to every Crew home game we could make. It was glorious.

Since then we have seen each other as often as possible and will be going to California in a month!

You and I are gonna live forever!