One day when we were home alone, Max came up to me and said, "Do you want to go to Wisconsin?" No details. No explanation. I said yes without hesitating. That was always how it worked with us.

On the drive, he told me where we were actually going: to buy sugar gliders from some guy just over the state line. An hour and a half away. We both knew we were supposed to be at a family dinner in Naperville that same evening.

We drove the whole way jamming to music and laughing. Got to the address — a run-down house with an incredibly nice Corvette sitting out front. We got the two sugar gliders, all the gear, and headed back.

On the way home I spotted a concert happening right along our route. I asked if he wanted to stop. He wasn't sure — we had the gliders. We went anyway. Had a blast.

We got home to find the family dinner had been canceled. Apparently because we weren't back in time. Mom was already upset when she came to confront us. Then she saw the sugar gliders.

The next thirty minutes of watching my mom try to process her anger while also confronting the existence of two sugar gliders in her house was one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed in my life.

Max and I worked together at Jimmy John's during the last year of his life. We had a running bit going for months.

Every Saturday, we'd grab a good-sized rock from the bank parking lot next door and place it on the shelf above the register — right next to the big box of chips.

Every Saturday, the manager would find it and absolutely lose his mind trying to figure out where it came from.

It never got old. Not once.

Max and I had our own version of Marco Polo. No words — just loud monkey noises. In public. In grocery stores. At Walmart at 11pm. Wherever we happened to be.

Other people would get uncomfortable. We would lose it laughing every single time. That was the energy we had together. Always scanning for the moment. Always finding it.

After a close friend of ours lost his father, Max went to their house the very next day — unannounced, uninvited — and mowed their lawn and did housework around the yard.

At the funeral, the family stood up and told that story in front of everyone. The mom was in tears. She said he was the most caring person she had ever known, showing up in her hardest moment without being asked.

That was Max. He didn't think twice about it. He just showed up.

Not long ago — fifteen years after we lost Max — I walked into the bank we used to go to together as kids.

The same teller was there. The moment she saw me, she started to cry.

She told me she still thinks about him. That he and I were always so kind to her — that we were the highlight of her day every time we came in. That she had told her son about him. That she still missed him.

He touched people just by being himself. He wasn't even trying.