I've been waiting all week for the playoffs to start, and now that it's gameday, suddenly all I can think about is wishing Fred were still around for all this. I went back through this thread and read everything you guys put up here. Thanks again to everyone who posted. All the grownups from my childhood proved to be just regular people with regular flaws, who created some form of letdown as I lost my innocence and began to grasp what it means to be human. Fred was always different. The Fred I remember as a kindergartner turned out to be the same person, all the way until last September, and the same person everyone here knew. In the year since then, it's been dawning on me how unique that is.