The Thin White Duke

I used to call him the thin white duke, or "The Duke" for short.

- The bookmark he used when he was reading at work was a photo strip of 4 photos of himself, the kind you get from the booths you see at the mall. Each photo in the strip was exactly the same shot, just him staring blindly at the camera.

- He always had a need to have absolutely everything in his life planned out; his work time, the amount of sleep needed, when to have lunch. He would spend hours every weekend at work making this complex timetable of events for the following week. He even had a thing on his schedule that was titled "“poop time"”, which was when he did nothing at all.

- I called him from work one night on Halloween, bored out of my mind with no customers coming in and the store completely dead. He asked if I had any candy to give kids dressed up and I said of course I did. He hung up the phone and, 5 minutes later he showed up at the store wearing a garbage bag with a disposable ashtray stapled to it and said “"Hey! Can you guess what I am dressed up as? I’m dressed up as the mysterious monster from the X-Files! I am wearing a garbage bag with a disposable ashtray stapled to it! Why would a person do such a thing? Isn’t that mysterious?!"

- We were hanging out one night after my job was done and he told me that he had found an old paycheck that he hadn'’t cashed from almost a year earlier in his room. I asked him why he hadn'’t cashed it and he tried to explain to me that he likes to deny himself the money from his job sometimes because it makes him feel like he is providing a service to people as opposed to just working for the money. He eventually started volunteering at a homeless shelter instead of not cashing the checks, which was the more logical thing to do. He always used to talk about leaving the modern world and going off to Africa to build bridges and homes, doing things that actually help people, things that "“make you realize you have actually done something right and good at the end of the day.”"


You were one fucked up dude, but quite the teacher. I haven'’t talked to you or seen you in seven years, but I still keep in mind your lessons.

Thanks Kent... Hope all is well with you.