"Hey Ginz!"

"Hi Mikey, how are you?"

You get the picture.

We have been through so many things together.

Last year, five of us--myself, Jeff Gell, Eric Brown, Peter Wallace, and Manlio Goetzl--rented a car and went to The Game. We had a blast--how many "Yale Sucks" chants did we get going?--and then took in a movie after the football (how could we not use the car for the full 24 hours of rental?).

There was the summer of 1995. Todd Braunstein, the current president, was in town doing summer Crimson. As a side affair, he wanted to clean up the archives of the paper and bind volumes of the paper from the past three years.

So every weekend, he and I and other Crimeds would hit the basement, sifting through paper, with the sounds of the Boss or the Forrest Gump soundtrack blaring in the background.

"I found the November 15th issue! We only need one to finish the month!"

So many times, I went with these folks to Red Sox games, movies, or just to the paper to hang out. And I'm going to miss it. A lot. I will never experience this again.

*************

This year's edition of The Game was perhaps my most special experience as a Crimson editor.

I had never covered football--this game was my first coverage. But I wanted to do this one.

Covering alongside me were Eric and Matt Howitt, with whom I shared the pleasure of being on the sports executive board two years ago. There we were in the press box, watching The Game, laughing it up, then getting serious and cranking out the Extra that followed The Game.

Matt was a bundle of excitement--he literally purloined the computer guts of the Crimson and took them to the Stadium to publish the Extra. And he was smiling--every minute of the Game.

As the shadows grew long on the field, and the scoreboard flashed congratulations to the seniors of the team, it dawned on me too that this was it--the next time I would see a Game, it would not be as an undergraduate or as a reporter.