The Mooch

It’s interesting how a simple, random act can change the entire course of your life. Or was it really random at all? Was it God putting things in motion that He knew you’d need later? This is the story of how I met my best friend, my roommate, and my brother through one of these events.

I was in my first semester in my new major, having recently given up on Mechanical Engineering to pursue computer programming. As a Computer Science major, we had to take various programming language courses. Attached to the lectures were labs, where we received homework assignments to complete under the guidance and tutelage of a teaching assistant. It was during the very first lab that my lab partner TD and I got stuck. We had no idea how to even start on the assignment, much less complete it. After fruitlessly going around and around on it, TD decided to see if he could find someone to help us. So, he set off while I continued to puzzle through the question. He came back a few minutes later holding the answers to all of the questions. Apparently, he’d not only found a hint, but he had managed to mooch the entire assignment off an innocent, trusting guy in our class. Ironically, I would find out later, that the answers weren’t even correct, and that our benefactor had no idea how to do it either.

The next day, I saw the same guy in my art class. Normally, I would not approach a virtual stranger and engage him in conversation, I mean computer nerds are introverts by nature. But something was compelling me to speak up. So, completely out of my comfort zone, I walked up to him after class and said, “Hey. You’re in my programming class. You helped us in the lab yesterday.” And with those simple words, a lifelong friendship was set in motion.

JT would end up becoming my best friend. We were inseparable. We worked on projects together, went for walks, took a dance class, photographed the campus, and shared everything. When he found himself homeless a semester later, I convinced my roommate to take JT in. By the end of the year, he was my soul brother…like we were two parts to one soul that had been split apart and cast into the universe. He was one of my groomsmen, and I still talk to him to this day, some twenty years later.

But as amazing as all of that is, what is more amazing is the timing of when I met him. I had just broken up with my long-time girlfriend a month before. She was the love of a lifetime, and I adored her. So, the sudden loss of her in my life utterly destroyed me. My depression had grown so bad that a week before the school year started, I found myself laying on the floor in my room, staring at the ceiling fan, seriously contemplating ending my life. And just when I needed someone in my life to lift me back up and show me that life was still worth living, that’s when God sent me JT.

He was the answer to a prayer that I hadn’t even prayed. But God knew what I needed anyway. And I’m still amazed to this day at how God used that random act of mooching an assignment to change my life…in more ways than even I suspected. JT actually introduced me to my wife as well. So, not only did God send JT to lift me back up, but he sent him to facilitate my ex’s replacement. Although it’s more accurate to say upgrade, because they aren’t equals.