I haven’t been able to stop thinking about AOF since I heard he passed away. I mean this as the highest possible compliment I could give someone: I would have assumed he was too stubborn to die.
I wonder if he’d be surprised by how upset I am by his passing. God knows we never exactly got along. I’m not sure there’s anybody on this forum I argued with more over all these many years. And even fewer who consistently drove me up a wall. I am confident though the feeling was more than mutual. Neither of us was ever shy about letting the other know what they thought about them.
But all of those spats, no matter how ugly they got, and no matter how often they ended with both of us laughing at the other, were always fun. We both agreed on one thing: debating is fun. It’s boring to only talk to people you agree with, especially with something as low stakes as who should dress as the seventh defenseman. And it’s boring to only debate people who will roll over. That certainly wasn’t AOF.
I’m not going to pretend we were friends when we weren’t. It would be an insult to him and all of you. He has real friends here. I'm sorry to all of you for losing someone you knew and cared about outside of this forum. But I do think there was a reason neither of us ever blocked the other even if we fought all the time. We both enjoyed those battles more than we hated each other. For two guys who never agreed, we were a lot alike. (There must be something about Bruins fans named Mike. They seem to be hard-headed, opinionated, stubborn mules.) And I think that gets to why I feel so awful he’s gone.
Despite how often the people of this board argue or drive each other insane, it’s ultimately a community of people bound by a common love. We’re all fans of the same team. We disagree about who they should draft and who they should hire or fire. But when the team wins, we all share in that joy together. Just like we all share the pain when they lose. So we all know without saying it, that every argument we have about them is rooted in that same love.
Now our group has lost someone who loved that team as much as any of us. And we lost him way too soon. It's awful. Mike deserved better. He deserved more time with his friends and family. He deserved more time to enjoy the Bruins and to write long posts about why he loved them. But I hope he can see the mark he left on this silly little place we all love. And I hope he can see this. I have one final compliment for my old nemesis: I know AOF didn’t go down without a fight. He never did.
