When I first started blogging, when I was blogging a ridiculous amount about stuff no one in the world cared about, one shining gem was the friend profile thing I did about once a week, detailing odds and ends about some of my friends from Drake and Illinois. Well it’s time to start making fun of my friends while boosting their ego all at the same time again. The first person selected in random lottery style (believe me I had custom made ping pong balls designed), is Hank.
I met Hank through the fraternity and quickly realized how horrible it is to know someone from Illinois that is a Packers fan. Terrible. Besides that Hank and I did share one thing in common: our 1st semester GPA: 2.46. I know this and likely won’t forget it to this day because at the time we were told that to make it into the fraternity we needed a 2.50 or better. So Hank and I were as close as we could come without making it. So I imagine Hank went through the same brief turmoil before we were informed the cutoff was actually 2.40.
Sophomore year Hank was a roommate along with Garrett and Justin. Probably the best room ever. Most stories from that year cannot be posted publicly for fear that my relatives that read this blog will disown me and not allow me to speak to my friends again.
Senior year Hank and I were briefly roommates until he decided I wasn’t cool enough for him and he moved into Drake Park Apartments. I’ve since forgiven him.
Hank is known pretty much as the outdoorsy nature guy of our pledge class. I intend to ride his coat tails once he has his own nature show. In college, Hank discovered a turtle species previously thought to not be naturally located in Iowa. He was in the newspaper and Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Raphael sent him a thank you card.
One time I went with Hank when he was working for the Iowa DNR I believe and we spent what seemed like 12 hours trekking around the prairie of Iowa checking traps for animals and documenting or whatever. It was fun, but one of those “I’m glad I did that once” situations. Hank was doing it every day all summer long. Really cool stuff, simply not for me.
Hank is now in Wyoming, with a beard jesus would be proud of doing all sorts of animal and nature stuff. Besides all the nature stuff we’ve done a pretty darn good job of staying in touch regardless of the distance (even more so now). I will likely call him immediately following the Packer’s loss to the Bears this season.