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.