My freshman year in high school I tried out for the soccer team. Among all other other nervous, terrified and falsely cocky pubescent males was one in particular. Nothing impressive in stature, muscle build or even adeptness. All around a middle-of-the-pack player, he blended in beautifully with the other hodge-podge of boys.

As the fall wore on, summer gracefully slipped away and with it went first year jitters. Class schedules and locker combinations became routine, as did daily afternoon threats of hazing from the junior varsity and varsity members. Bonds formed. Alliances were created. Personalities slowly began to creep out of their hiding places among the shadows of false pretenses and attitude. The season of change truly was afoot.

As the soccer season wore down the afternoons became crisper. Soon, with the days of wedgies behind us, we felt like champions. We felt as if we had survived the first grueling stage of adulthood: freshman year. We eagerly waited, trying to ride out the semester as November slipped into December.

The ninth of December. One morning which seemed so painfully normal it was eery. As 18 boys rose from their beds, all in their respective homes in their respective suburbs…we were all approached by our parents. In darkness, in awkward silence, in shock and in awe we were dealt the news that one of our teammates had been killed on his way home from school the afternoon prior.

A tractor-trailer, and icy road and a busy intersection. Three boys, two were killed. There was nothing spectacular about the accident. Nothing overly dramatic or even out of the ordinary. Everything about the wreck was so painfully routine that it even failed to make the evening news.

But come Monday morning, our worlds collapsed. We had to face one another, our questions shimmering in our glassy eyes. Our mortality had been tested. Our comradery had been shaken. And all of a sudden, the painfully normal person that we had lost no longer seemed so unremarkable.

Time wore on and the heartache reluctantly faded. We saw that things were different. Sure, thoughts of him sitting next to us in first period theology class became fuzzier upon recollection, but the strength of the message grew louder in our ears as the years past. Graduation even brought a subtle-yet-classy remembrance of our lost friend.

It’s been nine years since he left us. It feels like not a day past Sunday that it happened. I’d give anything to have him back, to know what the world would have been like if he was still around. Do I feel like I barely even know him since we only had four months together? Sure. But do I feel like those warm summer afternoons that the 19 of us shared were more than strength conditioning and tactical drills? Hell yes.

I will never forget what event in my life caused me to leave behind, arms outstretched, the comfortable days of youth. Catapulted into the blistering numbness of adulthood, borrowed-jersey on my back, things have never been the same since. But the only thing I regret is failing to see my friend as nothing but an ordinary player.