The End of Things

Today was Ryan's last day in the lab, the last day that there was someone who had been there longer than me. It's funny, because I only spend 1/5 of the year in lab--I drift in and out and others fade away, defend and leave.

So now, I have an odd sort of lab seniority, where I'm the one who has been there the longest, in a weird way. I won't be the one who has spent the most weeks there [Mike, our post-doc, will still have me beat], but I am the one who will remember more people. I am the one who will remember what it was like when our lab was a Boys Club [me not excluded], the one who will remember misanthropic Ryan and Shaun, the mess.

Ryan tells stories of the misadventures that came before me, but he has trouble remembering when I arrived. Was I there with Josh or Wolverine, he asks while telling the stories, but I have to say no.

Already I find myself telling stories, about how he's addicted to Mike & Ikes. Once, he offered me some, and I responded with, "No, I only like the red ones."

I watched as he absent-mindedly picked out the red ones as we continued our conversation. He held them out and I ate them. Later, I told him that this was the moment I knew he loved me.

So, for someone who claims to hate people, we've had an awfully good ride. When he talks about going to college in the late '90s, I remind him that I was 12 then. We send each other inappropriate youtube videos and discuss the inner nuances of the vilest Tucker Max stories. To everyone who comes after, he will be the ghost in my stories, the one whose name is indelible from lab. I may forget that they didn't know him, and I won't bother to explain the soup he left in my cabinet or all the colorful crap he left on my desk. Instead, I'll tell them about how he left the red ones on my keyboard, but not about how sad I was when I left five boxes on his desk and told them they should last about one hour of his journey to Washington DC.