4 1/2 Years

Dear World, meet Dave Anderson (David Franklin Anderson II, AKA "Deuce" as he liked to be called). I moved to Fairport, NY when I was five and I'd say we were best friends by the age of 8. Dave has 13 half-sisters and one half-brother and was loved by all, especially his Dad. Dave is the most whitty, comical, cheerful, laid-back, intelligent, procrastinating, good-natured, loving, energetic, creative, enthusiastic, adventurous, wild (hence the name), caring, forgiving, motivated, easily entertained, fearless, inspiring, unconventional, nonconforming, exciting person I've ever known.

David Anderson

Before I went to work, my Mom and Dad were the lucky ones that got to break the news to me. That day was September 6, 2007, the worst day of my life. It has been four and a half years since Dave died and not an ounce less painful. I would gladly give my life for him to live one more day.

Dave loved the outdoors. He grew up with 29 acres of trees surrounding his house and 1/4 mile long driveway. His favorite country was Scotland (of course, an Anderson would love Scotland). You can see in the picture just how much he loved his trip there. More than the trip, he loved spending time with his family. He loved nothing as much as he loved his family, and there was a lot of that to keep his heart and smile big.

After a few years of living in the same town we became completely inseparable. I share literally thousands of memories with this guy. Everything Dave would do, I would be doing alongside him. The exception to this is singing. Dave was an outstanding vocalist and had all sorts of solos in his choir concerts.


Dave was always very intelligent. I think he knew more at the age of three than I know now. Definitely a larger vocabulary and clearly better at English and Social Studies. Dave passed all of his AP exams in high school, of which he took many, a feat I was not lucky enough to accomplish. He was also the biggest procrastinator I will know. He would put off huge assignments until the night before and then stay up the entire night doing them. I understand this now that I am in college, but in HS is was pretty unheard of and it happened on a regular basis. Born on 8-18-88, his favorite number was 8. Outside of volleyball I don't know how this plays a factor, but it was still his favorite number, regardless. #8 is now retired for Fairport Volleyball.

 As a youngin, I spent the majority of my time with Dave at scouts. We saw each other every week and did lots of activities together. One thing we both really enjoyed was camping. Many stories accompany these trips, as well as many games, food, and ALWAYS fireworks! Kemps and Euchre were the favorite card games. The leaders would get mad at us every trip, but you know we weren't about to leave them at home. Eventually they became accustomed to it.
One of my favorite camp outs was in February next to a frozen lake. After we had set up our tents and eaten dinner it was getting pretty dark. We decided to slowly test out the ice. We found it was plenty thick and ran out to slide around on the ice. We brought out a sled with rope attached and slingshot people across the lake. We came back to the tents for something and all was silent for a minute, when out in the middle of the lake went off an airplane firework which spun up around 50 feet in the air. We convinced our leaders to let us give everyone a fireworks show.

Dave was never found without candy or food of some sort. While at scout camp we were told not to bring any food because of animals. My brother has stories involving bears and skunks, but ours involved raccoons. Dave brought a bag full of candy and electronics. He thought a lock on the zipper would keep out pesky scout leaders critters. We woke up in the middle of the night to noise and found Dave's bag had been torn into and found candy wrappers and random Deuce's backpack accessories scattered on the ground. Funnier was the fact that we found one of his jolly rancher suckers slathered to a tree. Some raccoon had been diggin in, slobbering all over, and somehow his bounty was now stuck to the side of this tree. We came to find out, with the help of a flashlight, that said raccoon was approximately 5 feet above us lurking in the tree waiting to reclaim his prized sucker.

Dave (right) can almost be heard saying "Can we take the picture already so I can go get a twinkie?"

 Also that week at scout camp, I remember Dave losing his wallet and anxiously looking for it. It was a stingray skin wallet given to him by family members, and he thought it was the coolest because it was waterproof, but more importantly fireproof (Dave left fire in his wake). I helped him look and when he had given up and went to sulk in the tent I kept looking and found it in the middle of the fire pit! Turns out he had it in his shirt pocket and lost it when he bent over to play with the fire. Unharmed, the wallet was safely returned. I now have a huge stingray skin wallet to save my precious benjamins, but mainly another way to remember Dave.

Back of a hoodie I made (Mountain Dew on front)

 Another scouting memory was in Dave's woods. We were camping in his forest. When breakfast came around, Dave was not excited about making food in the rain when his house was so close by. Although our leaders told us not to, I followed Dave back to his house where he ate a bowl of reese's puffs cereal. This was Dave's favorite breakfast "meal" growing up, which turned into a bottle of Mountain Dew or Snapple with a cold slice of Mark's pizza in high school years.

As time progressed, our camping adventures took different form. We had to do more intelligent activities, such as the infamous gallon challenge. In an hour's time you are supposed to drink a gallon of whole milk. Dave and I were too of the smallest, yet apparently the most determined. The others were full after of milk after half a gallon and began throwing up so they didn't feel like a cow. We kept drinking, and Dave won with his superhuman stomach. As a group, this was one of our favorite memories. We always enjoyed ourselves on trips!   

 

Bedhead

Also on this trip, many of us acquired nicknames. Three of which I remember are David "Bedhead" Anderson, RJ "Earflaps" Mattei, and Aaron "Cottage Cheese" Carmack. Although we joked about his hair and said he had been balding ever since he was born, everyone loved Dave's hair. It was super thin, but really silky smooth and he could do whatever he wanted with it, as you can see from the picture. If he told it to dance, it would dance.

Cottage Cheese

 Throughout middle school, Dave was very grateful to me for being his friend. He literally had a flat head and would meander down the hallways balancing books on his head. Unbeknownst to me, he was glad that I was such a good friend in middle school. "I mean who wants to be friends with the Hostess posterboy with a vocabulary like Lincoln" as he put it in my yearbook. When I had candy in my locker to sell, Dave had candy in his locker to eat. In middle school his favorites were pixy sticks. He graduated onto bigger and better in later years; starburst, but only the orange and pink. I was the lucky recipient of all the reds and yellows. I never once noticed the fact that he was overweight in middle school, because I loved him for who he was. We joked about it, but I knew he could knock me out if he wanted. He made this fact known in my senior year book and I was surprised that it meant so much to him.

In middle school I started playing on the volleyball team and spoke with Dave about it. I told him to try out for the team in 7th grade and he did. Not so much something he wanted to do, but for me. 9th grade, our first year to actually try out for the team, he was cut. There were not many trying out for the team, so being an overweight teenager, I'm sure this was hard. This didn't stop Dave; determined and excited, he made the cut the next year and proudly shaved his mile time from 14 minutes to under 7 minutes!  We would yell at him to hurry up while he listened to his iPod and we watched him dance around the track. Dave was definitely the most entertaining on the team. When he went on his leadership trip during our senior year, our games were so boring. When he was there we had creative cheers. We spent a lot of time on bench, unfortunately, and had a lot of time to kill. We also had entertainment when he would fall asleep while line judging for varsity when we were on JV, would put on his ipod when running our mile or two runs and dance as he ran around the track, or when he would stick his legs behind his head on the bus on our way to matches. He earned the Spark Plug Award and definitely deserved it; he would get our team excited, riled up, and laughing no matter the occasion.
In middle school I went skiing for my first time ever. I instantly fell in love with it after a few tips from Greg Rumsey who we ran into on the slopes (go figure). Knowing Dave did a lot of skiing in Utah when he went out to visit his family, I suggested we should both join ski club during the winter. Dave willingly agreed and we spent many hours together cruising down the slopes. He was not the best skiier when it came to form, but he sure was the fastest. You can compare his style of skiing to that of a flying squirrel. He skiied with coat unzipped, poles in the air, legs and arms spread out wide, he would go straight down the middle of the black diamond runs, fearless as ever.

In 9th grade, Dave joined the rugby team and told me I should join. Stubbornly, I told him I am smaller than everyone on the team and would never even consider it. The next year he told me I should because Colin was on the team and he was the same size as me. He may have weighed as much as I did, but I was not to be fooled. Colin was a black belt in karate, wicked fast, and a beast.  

Once again, the next year Dave offered the same invitation and tried to get me to join the team because it would be fun to have me on the team. I turned it down again for the same reasons. Finally, my senior year, I decided to play. I don't remember if Dave even bothered asking, but I came to the realization that I had asked him to play volleyball and join ski club and he did it at the drop of a dime. I had waited years and been stubborn.

Sure enough, as I expected, I was the lightest person on the pitch. This included the juniors. Kids on the team were more than twice as heavy as I. However, this meant I had the most adrenalin! I was scared out of my mind, but it was so much fun. I didn't have any great achievements and was definitely the worst at tackling, but completely regret not joining at first.

I wish I had picked up on some lessons earlier from Dave and been more willing to do this one thing that he requested of me. It was so much fun to play alongside him on the pitch and see a different side of Dave. He was shifty and once again, fearless. 

Bowling was another one of the fun activities we did together. Dave and I decided to try out for the bowling team. There was one spot for fifteen of us trying out, so it was a joke, but free bowling and fun together, so we enjoyed getting cut = )

During these tryouts we stumbled upon the fact that the bowling alley had dollar games after 9 p.m. every Thursday. Can you guess where we went every Thursday night for the next year and a half? Yeah, we all bought bowling shoes and had our group of bowlers. We shared such great late night times with these fellas.

Occasionally we had others join us because they would question why we wore pajama pants to school on Thursdays. Of course, this is because it was Pajama Pants Thursday, duh! We were goofy. We would mess around and kick the bowling balls down the lane or dive like superman or a penguin and slide it (mostly inspired by Dave of course), but we were good. You'd expect so after bowling dozens and dozens of times.  

Dave loved fire, and along with that love of fire came the love of fireworks. As mentioned previously, we always had fireworks on camping trips. Dave had a huge collection that he acquired during his cross-country trips. After our senior year, Dave was told he had to light them all off because he'd be going to school and couldn't take them with him. We lit off thousands of fireworks. I believe we had two hours of explosions of color and noises. Most July 4th's and New Year's Eves he was traveling visiting family, but this July 4th was the exception.
One of my favorite memories with fireworks was with a group of us around 3 a.m. Hanging out at Dave's house, having a huge bonfire in his woods, burning all of our school papers, we decided to go light off some fireworks. We didn't want to wake his Dad up, so we grabbed an old rickety ladder and drove to a complex across from the high school. I remember laughing as I watched John and Dave run across the street all stealthy in their black, with ladder in hand. They ran up next to the school and propped the ladder up in a corner. We ran up the hill and shot off some fireworks because it was the most conventional spot to light them off. Then we ran down the hill, hopped up on the ladder, climbed onto the roof, and shot fireworks off there. Had fireworks not been illegal, we probably wouldn't have bothered. That's the most fun thing about fireworks in New York; you have to constantly be on the lookout while simultaneously trying to enjoy them. Dave's group of friends was perfect! We had so much fun together! 

The white water rafting trip in WV was our favorite. Dave and I went twice (once at 14 and once at 18), each time we had two days of rafting / kayaking. The first trip we rafted the first day (10 people). We were the smallest and sat in the back. The second day we decided to take the double kayaks down the rapids instead, because we had a little more freedom to do what we wanted. We came up to the first rapid and collectively decided to flip the kayak. 

The second trip was different in a few ways. #1, it was COLD. Driving down to WV, there was snow all over the sides of the highway. The water couldn't have been more than 35 and the air was between 25-35. We would wake up and the tables had frost on them, or it would be pouring and 35 degrees. Like I said, this was our favorite trip. #2, we were older and had been on this trip before. #3, having been on the trip before we forced our way to the front of the raft. We rafted both days this trip. The first together and the second I went with my family and he with some friends.

 While we were rafting, the guide we were with needed to know names so he could tell us where to steer so we didn't die. He asked Dave, and Dave said "call me Deuce." Our instructor liked it and decided to call me "Ace" to simplify things. I thought it was fitting.

A most unusual picture where Dave and I aren't together

Also on this trip was my one documentation of our favorite card game, euchre. They thought I had a really good hand and was cheating and taking a picture. Turns out I was just taking a snapshot for a blog 5 years from then.

 We played euchre on volleyball bus rides, during volleyball tournaments, before volleyball practice, at lunch (everyday), camp outs, and before school (religiously). Dave and I were always on a team and I loved it. 90% of the time we absolutely trounced our opposition. We were pretty unstoppable because we could read each others' minds. We love euchre!

As you can see, hanging out with Dave was way too much fun. It was so easy for the two of us to enjoy ourselves. Sleeping over at his house always consisted of staying up until at least 2:00. He would get mad at me when I wanted to go to sleep before he did = ) We would always do the same activities for the most part. His favorite game was Settlers of Catan and we played that a lot. We would play Mario Party on N64, Red Faction on PS2, take a sheet of ice from his pool and shoot it with a pellet gun or paintball gun, light off fireworks, shoot people with mini marshmallows from his blowguns, compete to see who could jump the furthest away and make it into his pool, or simply bounce a golfball onto a trampoline, wait 5 seconds for it to sink to the bottom of his white-floored pool, then turn around and fight to see who could get it first (the trampoline acted as a third person so we didn't know where the ball went). Other activities may have included the occasional community service with Colin to visit the local water tower right down the street and remove some of the graffiti by covering it with black paint. That was one of the last memories I had with Dave and Colin. So much fun!

 

GUESS WHO!?

 Colin was Dave's best friend. As they were growing up, Colin lived up the street from Dave. This made it very convenient for them to hang out. Dave would tell me all sorts of fun stories of things they did together. The two of them were so creative and adventurous and did such fun things together. If they were together, that meant trouble. I think the best example of their keen craftiness at work was at 3 a.m. in Colin's basement. They decided to completely wrap Dave in duct tape and then tape him as he tried to get out. Colin has a video of it that I would have loved to post, but it was too long for YouTube and in the wrong format to load straight onto here. Unfortunately you'll have to settle with a picture instead of seeing these masterminds at work. JUST KIDDING! I got it to work!! Ladies and gentlemen, Dave Anderson and Colin Endsley.

Colin you are a stud and I want to thank you for being such a great friend to my best friend!

Dave and I participated in scouts together. We helped each other with our Eagle projects, went to scout camp together, earned the same merit badges, and had our Eagle Court of Honor together in September 2006, go figure. Most of the stories shared were about the two of us and we loved it! I am glad I was able to share this special event with him and support him in all his work to achieve this.  

At our Senior Bash, we had fun doing our own thing. There were plenty of fun activities, but of course David wanted some other form of entertainment because he was not the average guy.

We strategically planned it so we could stealthily sneak past the many chaperons and make it to the stairwell leading to a new adventure.

 With the use of decoys and sacrificing a few helpful souls, we made it up and explored. We were so proud of our accomplishment because the place was so heavily secured since we had 600 seniors running around.

This is Dave's senior picture:

His choices were between this and the following

I wasn't surprised to see these at all. He showed them to me and we had a good chuckle. I went with him when he turned them in and jokingly handed her two saying "I can't decide between the two." She grimaced/ frowned and snatched one out of his hand. Dave wasn't one for photos and while everyone else was paying way too much to have their picture taken, Dave had his sister grab a camera and take a snapshot in his hallway.

One graduation party we had was at Greg Rumsey's cottage on the lake. To no surprise, Dave decided to share some cake with Sarah Morley's face. Sarah reciprocated magnificently.

Towards the end of our senior year, Dave decided to do something he saw my brother do in a video he had made. Dave wanted to jump out the second story window into the school courtyard. With much help of distraction he put on someone's hoodie and (not so) stealthily worked his way over to the window and dropped out. It was most hilarious because it was so pathetic the way he had planned the entire thing and his escape into the abyss. Dave was not allowed to go to school the last few days. He would miss our trip to Six Flags, so I made these T-shirts to wear in honor of him.

We went to a Downstage comedy event one of the last few days of the school year. Apparently he wasn't even supposed to be on the school premises because of his suspension for jumping out the window. I didn't know this until we got there and he pulled out spiderman masks and asked if we would wear them so he didn't stick out. He told us to call him Lizardman. Haha, it was hilarious! We all watched downstage wearing masks so his identity would not be made known. He was not about to miss Julia Nunes' performance.



While we were taking our AP Calculus exam, Dave turned and started talking to me. I didn't want to get in trouble because that was my one exam to excel, so I glanced over at him and he pointed to his test. He had drawn a picture of a horse for an answer to one of the problems and written below it "Are we not horses?" He said it should get him at least one point and I laughed. He was good at drawing. This horse had become a trademark of him and his friends. They posted hundreds of these "Are we not horses" posters all over the school and it made everyone so upset they would run around tearing them down because they didn't know what they were for. The drawing was doing in paint, it was black and white, and had a horse with question marks over its head. When asked what it means, they would respond "It's just something to consider." I have one hanging in my room right now, courtesy of John Venturo.

Dave had this coat, "The Beast" as his family called it. He is wearing it in the first picture. Everyone thought it was nasty but Dave liked it and that's all he cared about. I was lucky enough to inherit that along with Dave's Superman cape, which came in hand at many volleyball games! I am glad to have these tokens to remind me of Dave each day.

The last memory that I had with Dave was at Sarah Morley's house (having a farewell party for some kids leaving for college) the night before he was to leave to drive to across the country. At first we were sitting around the campfire roastin little marshmallows and eating food, but we were there for a while so that lasted until the fire went out. We then proceded to stare into the sky at what we thought was heat lightning coming our way... then the wind picked up, and after a while we noticed that a storm was a-brewin, so while Sarah Morley, Greg Rumsey, our man Deuce, and Sarah's friends were watching the storm slowly make it's way towards us, I went to the trampoline since I got bored. Everyone came over and started jumping and soon the storm broke over us and there was thunder, lightning, and pouring rain over our heads. The girls in the group went inside as not to mess up their gorgeous locks atop their heads, and Dave, Greg, and I proceeded to jump on the trampoline and make all kinds of noise. Greg and I eventually went inside because it was raining harder. We talked for a few minutes inside, then Sarah asked where Deuce was... we looked out the window and from a flash of lightning we saw Deuce's body illuminated in the air while he was jumping on the trampoline. Greg and I decided if Deuce was out there we should be too, so we ran out and began jumping (slipping and falling on our faces as well) on the trampoline and yelling as loud as we could while being blinded every 3 seconds by flashes of lightning- I guess this is what most high intelligence teenagers like us do in our free time, right? 

No matter how terrible (or fun for that matter) Dave always made it better in some way and more exciting. Whether it absolutely sucked and he came up with a crappy but funny idea of something to do, he was never idle. For example, sitting in some classroom one day we were back against the wall and were thinking of something to do while I was banging my head against the wall- so he came up with the idea of us playing "name that thump" and we had a ball... and a slight headache after trying to get him to guess jingle bells.
Seldom could the name Deuce be mentioned not followed by a slight chuckle and a nodding of the head continued with something along the lines of "what was he thinking?" 


Now for a mountains worth of pictures. Pictures are worth a thousand words. Don't you wish I had used 15 pictures instead?

Greg Rumsey, Kevin Orme, Dave, Aaron

Some zoo

Fruit Cup, Dave, and Brent Raspberry

London

West Virginia

 

Nutcase holding chocolate

Dave and Julia

Dave and Julia

Dave and Julia

Dave and Julia Nunes

Ishraq and Dave

Nap Time on the Lawn of the Capitol

Dave, Colin, Aaron

I sure am glad I have all these memories to share not only with Dave but now with you all! He meant SO much to me, and wasn't afraid to let me know whatever about him- dreams, goals, secrets, you name it. He is definitely a good example of living your life to it's fullest; not only did Dave do whatever he wanted to do, he made the best out of the worst situations- camping on the white water rafting trip we slept in a tent filled half with water, but there were 3 of us on his airmattress, so we were all set with everything we needed.
 
and the stories don't end there...
Never was there a bad memory with Dave. He was that ideal best friend anyone could ask for. We never fought, and never didn't get along. It was the perfect friendship.

Deuce was always extremely modest about everything. Except for me (and a few other friends I'm guessing) he always denied how good he actually was at something. Rugby for example; everyone knew he owned at that sport, but when anyone questioned him he named other players on the team who "deserved more credit than he" as he would put it. He earned the Unsung Hero award the year I played.


As cliché as this sounds Dave was never in a bad mood. He's everything I would want in a best friend, but maybe that was based around him. Whatever he was is what I wanted. Now that he is gone it is very difficult to make friends because no one measures up to what he was to me and I can not grow close to anyone. He is an irreplaceable, beautiful puzzle piece in what once was  

I don't like the person I have become without you and I want you back so I can enjoy life like I did when you were living. We'd be living together at school and life would be a completely different experience than it has been the last 4 1/2 years.

It is hard not to think of Dave every day, especially when I am watching a movie or listening to music. I think he looks and acts like certain characters and can only imagine what he would be like now. I can't listen to Yellowcard's song "only one" without crying because of how much it makes me think of him. For anyone who has seen it, the movie Reign Over Me was extremely tough to watch because the only thing going through my mind was Dave. I liked the movie, though. It is one of my favorites.

I'm grateful that not many people look like Dave. He doesn't have a common look or anything. I've had a few circumstances where I see someone and think it's him. Recently it happened on campus once. That is the worst because I want to break down and cry but can't in front of thousands and thousands of students because no one would understand.

Dave, you meant everything to me and losing you was the most painful thing I ever could imagine.
I miss you more than I could ever miss anything in life!