Leveling Up Together
There are friendships that begin with a handshake, a class schedule, or a shared locker. And then there are the ones that begin in Azeroth, where a digital world rendered in armor and mana bars somehow becomes the scaffolding for something very real.
I met David Morgan over twenty years ago in World of Warcraft, where we weren’t just friends, we were allies, warriors, defenders of a world that didn’t technically exist but somehow meant everything. We slayed dragons, yes. We braved undead crypts and molten caverns. But mostly, we watched each other’s backs in a world where death could be undone but betrayal could not.
In 2013, David got in his Mustang and drove from Florida to South Carolina. That was our first time meeting in what people like to call the “real world,” as if the hours we spent together online didn’t count. But when he pulled into the parking lot, friendship transcended pixels. It became something with weight. With gravity.
Over the years, we’ve built a living, breathing kind of mythology. There were late-night raids and early morning bike rides. Shared drinks and shared losses. When I lost my mom, David was there, not just present, but holding up pieces of me I didn’t know were slipping. When Hominy passed, he didn’t just comfort me, he cried with me. When Lizzie and I got married, he didn’t just attend, he celebrated like a brother who could not be prouder.
And when David’s life cracked open, when grief came for him like a storm that doesn’t knock, I did what friends do. I drove. No quest log needed. Just love and gas money all the way to Florida.
In the aftermath, when he needed more than a visit. When he needed a new start. I did what I could to help him find one. Not just a job. A chapter. One where he could breathe again.
Time changes people, but not all of them change away from each other. Some grow parallel. And that’s what David and I have done. We’ve grown up, grown older, and somehow grown closer. We don’t ride mounts through Elwynn Forest anymore. Now it’s road bikes or spur-of-the-moment road trips. But the essence remains: we look out for each other. We keep each other alive, not just in the biological sense, but in the soulful one.
We play pool in dimly lit bars with music that doesn’t match our taste. We build computers like they’re altars to possibility. We sit around fire pits that sometimes explode.
David is, without exaggeration, one of the most generous and tender people I’ve ever known. He listens with his whole heart. He laughs out loud and infectiously. And he shows up. Every. Single. Time.
It’s his birthday today. And while birthdays are usually about cake and celebration and thinking about how old you’ve gotten, I’m choosing to think about how lucky the rest of us are to have him. David’s friendship is the kind that doesn’t flinch. That doesn’t fade. That survives long distances and long silences and long, weird conversations about nothing in particular.
There’s no final boss for this kind of friendship. No credits roll. Just another shared day, another road trip, another fire, another build, another laugh.
Happy birthday, David. Here’s to the journey that started in a fantasy world but somehow turned out to be the realest thing of all.
