I first met Tommy Keschl (pronounced Ke-shul) during the last weekend of my freshman year at the University of Maine. My friend Aerin Raymond had told me that another of her friends had been working on writing some music, and since she knew that I played bass and Tommy likes to sing, she gathered the two of us together to go out to her friend's place. That afternoon was my first time meeting Tommy, and since it was the end of the semester, I had no inkling what was in store from that point forward.
Tommy and Jake were roommates in the room next to me at Androscoggin Hall on the UMaine campus, so when I came back for sophomore year and met Jake, I reconnected with Tommy and started hanging out with them quite a bit. Tommy and I became roommates during our junior year, and we lived together again in the group apartment where we spent our senior year of undergrad. Tommy earned his B.A. in English with me in May of 2006, and we both began the M.A. in English program that August. Though we didn't live together during graduate school, we reconnected to live together in an apartment from September 2008 until August 2009 after I had earned my M.A. and Tommy was finishing his final credits for his degree.
When I say that it feels like it's been more than seven years that I've known Tommy, that's not to say that it's a bad thing. It just seems as though so many things have happened in that span of time that we've experienced together as friends. We've both been through good times and bad times, girlfriends and breakups, and plenty of conversations about life in general. It frightens me to think about how things would've turned out had I not gotten out of my shell to start hanging with Tommy and Jake during my undergraduate life.
Tommy and I have been friends, roommates, classmates, and co-workers (from our time at Spotlight Cinemas in Orono). We've been frisbee players and flag football teammates and group members for NFL game-picking pools. We've been through a lot together.
I am happy that I will be able to have Tommy as my Best Man for this wedding experience, and I look forward to going through the married stage of my life still keeping in touch with him, even if only by phone call as the call of careers inevitably pulls us all away from the state of Maine that fostered our childhood and progression into adulthood. Tommy was my roommate during the early stages of my relationship with Katelyn, always cheering me on as the relationship progressed from just meeting Katelyn to becoming boyfriend and girlfriend and then to the way it is now, where Katelyn and I will be married in less than a year. He has watched this love ripen, and blossom, and become the beautiful thing that it is now; I can think of no better person to give a toast to this union.
Because I don't want to end on a completely serious note, if Tommy was a superhero his name would be Center of Attention Boy. Keep that in mind when you see him at the wedding.
So that rounds out my wedding party; I hope this gives all of you readers a better sense of the three men who will be standing up front with me on my wedding day.
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