Daily Norseman
It is with a heavy heart that I write this tribute to my late friend, AJ.
Life can be fickle. All you can do sometimes is take things day by day and find joy in the moments that you get to spend with people who impact your life in meaningful ways. Those moments, no matter how simple or how complicated, are important. They leave a lasting imprint on you and eventually become the only thing you can cling to, in order to keep someone in your memory. People come in and out of our lives, and there is often an underlying assumption that when they leave, we will see them next time. It’s as inevitable as the start of the next Minnesota Vikings season, until it isn’t.
This past week, I lost someone in my life who was very important to me. We had fallen out of touch for the past few years, but we spent many days and nights, months and years, laughing and creating lasting moments. We bonded over many commonalities and interests, all of them special in their own way. Among those things that we bonded over was our love of football.
After college, a couple of buddies and I moved to Omaha, Nebraska, to make our name as a punk band. I was frontman/lead guitar (yeah, you heard that right), ZB was our killer rhythm guitarist, JC jammed on his bass, and our late friend AJ was the animal on drums. We shared some incredible band practices and put on some badass performances. We all lived together in our rental house just off of Blondo Street. We were just kids, out of school, with full freedom to make our own way in our lives. That is where we started a journey together, and also where we began our bond over the sport that we love.
Now, AJ wasn’t a Vikings fan. Actually, he didn’t have a team for a long time. I think he decided pretty quickly that he didn’t want to be a Vikings fan after we watched a playoff game together for the first time. If you don’t know Omaha, there is actually a surprising contingent of Vikings faithful in the area. However, the only true loyalty to a football team in Nebraska is to the Huskers. In fact, I am pretty sure nobody in the room watching the game, except me was a Vikings fan on that frigid day in January of 2016.
Aside from Bud Grant coming out like the iron man that he was, it was actually kind of a boring game. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool seeing the Vikings play in a smashmouth, low-scoring, absolutely chilling January game outdoors. Then Walsh and his stupid fat head lined up the game-winning kick, that my 2-year-old could have made, and absolutely botched it. The season was over, and the most important people in my life, at the time, were there to witness it with me....
