A Friend You Can Never Forget

So what's been creeping its way into my cranium? Let's see - I can rattle off the 1985-86 Boston Celtics' championship roster, all 43 presidents in order and each NCAA Division I men's basketball champion since Sputnik hit space. (I had a lot of free time as a kid.)

I can explain the infield fly rule, why you should never turn your back to the basketball and how to determine if a secondary is playing zone or man coverage. (I'm also well aware that none of the above makes for a compelling column -- but if you disagree, e-mail me. And get help. Quick.)

What else do I have upstairs, top shelf? Well, I just realized something. I know this guy named "Duff," and you probably don't. This week, I've decided you should. So here goes.

Duff -- that's his nickname, and we'll leave it at that -- takes my cake as that person I've met in college, the one I'll never forget wherever I go or whatever I do.

Please tell me you know your own distinctively comical character who makes you scratch your head in wonder. Is he truly that way, or does he live each day according to a script? I'm always asking him, "What's going on in your life?" not to be polite but because amusing stories about life's daily trials and tribulations inevitably will follow, and they're never the same when heard secondhand.

How do I put such a person into words, much less just 900 of them? How do I relate to you who he is? Or how he differs from everyone else? Or how badly he smells?

What do you say about a guy who has lost his cordless phone twice? Who on six separate occasions - six! -- absentmindedly left his ATM card in the machine and walked away? Who three years ago brought a life-sized cardboard cutout of Booker (of the bourbon company) to a basketball ticket camp-out so someone would be keeping him company?

Close your eyes and visualize Santa Claus in slacks, sans beard. Add Fred Flintstone's body with Barney Rubble's persona. Include parts of Bluto from "Animal House," Chris Farley from "Tommy Boy," Barney from "The Simpsons" and Norm from "Cheers," and you're starting to recreate the Duff genome.

Congratulations, you just pictured the best argument against genetic replication. It'd be hardly fair to the world if another Duff doggie-paddles his way into an upcoming gene pool.

His unique mystique and distinct physique -- a.k.a. "Duff in the Buff," unveiled all-too-often when he removes his shirt at the most inopportune of moments -- have left me with more stories than the Sears Tower.

Duff's tales of woe-'n-oh! will make you laugh so hard you'll cry, appropriate because that's how you'll react if you don't approach these tales with the right sense of humor.

Car accidents are no laughing matter -- except Duff's because he proclaimed it to be. He crashed his 4-by-2 Chevrolet pickup -- dubbed the "Duff truck" - while answering his cell phone. Initially stunned but unscratched, he laughed the incident off an hour later, explaining how such an event could happen only to a "cultured redneck" such as himself.

If that's me I'm still fuming. But that's the thing about Duff -- he's more interested in what's for dinner tonight, not what life served him yesterday or will have in store for him tomorrow. He'll bite into a ham sandwich, fall asleep with it on his chest, wake up and finish it. Life, not surprisingly, goes on.

But sometimes you wonder how. One night last year, a Goodfellows bartender was cleaning up after a busy night by pouring "pingers" -- the last sip of beers, often left undrunk -- and cigarette butts into one pitcher. Duff, quite plastered yet still thirsty, saw the pitcher filled with Winstons and Marlboros floating amid the beer remains, asked the bartend if it was spoken for, and downed it without flinching. Then burped.

I sometimes wonder if I'll ever meet someone even somewhat similar. To answer that query, I revert to his humorously hungover response in a class to his professor's obviously rhetorical question: "Not ... very ... likely."

It's been a while since my buddy's been in The Daily Tar Heel, so I figured he was overdue for some ink. In February 1999, a reporter writing a story about our fraternity quoted him as saying, "The keg's supposed to be here at 11 (p.m.), the goat gets here at 12 (a.m.), and the stripper gets here at 1 (a.m.). ... Or we could invert that. Or we could do it all at once."

I couldn't let his legend rest with that.

But I don't have to. Duff's still writing his own legacy, scripting new chapters each day. He's full to his pot-belly of an "Animal House" approach to life best summarized by Dean Wormer: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

"Yeah, maybe" once retorted a belly-laughing Duff, never one to shy away from self-deprecating humor if it'll rouse a chuckle from his audience, "But it sure is fun."

You'll never meet a more genuinely warm-hearted dude, so stop looking. It's no surprise he used to sign e-mail with another line from that classic flick, "Damn glad to meet ya," which fits better than Goldilocks in Baby Bear's bed.

Couldn't of said it better myself, Duff. Damn glad to know you.

Dan Satter reminds you that cigarette butts, pingers and half-eaten ham sandwiches are hazardous to your health. Send responses -- but only funny ones -- to satter@email.unc.edu.