I was friends with Eric back in middle school. While that was an awkward time where no one seemed to fit in, somehow we managed to fit in even less. We became a group of geeks. Eric was even one of my main characters in a script that I wrote in the seventh grade. As the years went on, we saw less of each other as our classes were rarely the same. The last I saw of him was when I took my son to a pizza party at Little Caesars. It was the awkward meeting of people who know each other but have been separated by enough years to become strangers. I felt sad about it then, but even more so on reflection now.
Eric was a good man. He is missed.