darryls and larries - where it all began
Dan and I first met at Pirates training camp in September 2005. (Pirates was our hockey team, not the peg leg/parrot guys) I had played with or against many of the guys growing up, so it was more of a reunion for us. There were some new faces who made it through tryouts though, most notably the (seemingly quiet) red haired guy with blue hockey gear from Calgary. He was a pretty good player, but it was a bit difficult to figure him out at first... is he serious or is he joking? How did a guy from Calgary end up on the team? What is this guy’s deal anyway. On our first big road trip I got on the PIRATE SHIP a little late and started walking down the aisle... veterans had paired up, the guys I knew paired up, the other new guys paired up... and OH NO, last seat available is with this guy. 3+ hours with a stranger I had barely said a word to. Alright, going to be a long trip I thought... Well it wasn’t. Everyone knows how comfortable he could make you feel. We chatted about anything and everything. It was like we had somehow known each other for our entire lives already. We discovered we had some of the same classes, so the next day we sat together/paired up in group projects. For the remaining 4 years at STFX we synced our schedules completely. I don’t mean just class schedules... I mean food schedules, gym schedules, study schedules, and of course (maybe most importantly) partying schedules. We pretty much spent every waking second of university together and I can’t think of another person I could spend that much time with and never get bored. (Oops I better include my wife Christine on that list or I’m in trouble)
Dan had the ability to make you laugh without even saying anything, and the ability to buckle down when it was time to get serious... which I often needed when it was time to study. He kept me on track and helped me out in any way possible. I truly believe the time I spent with Dan during those years made me into who I am today. Because that’s just what Dan did, he turned everyone around him into a better person.
A lot of you probably expected me to tell a funny story like when he “scream puked” in the back of my parents church at Easter mass after we drank too many Colt 45s the night before. Or when he was slipping me Neocitrin before the gym, telling me it was NO-xplode pre-workout. Or when we got our “weapons” confiscated for “executing patrons/bouncers” at the bar when we dressed up as ninjas for Halloween. Or how we would hide the other guys cellphones in the Library with the ringer on loud after changing it to “Genie in a Bottle” or “A Thousand Miles” while the other guy scrambled to find it. Or how we weaseled our way out of a failed Corporate Taxation grade to ensure we graduated on time. I won’t even tell the one about how we broke down the walls of the ancient tradition of the Burke/MacIsaac (BURMAC) rivalry at STFX. I’ll just stick with the story of how it all began for us.
Daryl and Larries Forever.
-Luke MacDonald (Larries)