Larry is celebrating his birthday today.
I remember seeing his reply in the thread of comments under our mutual friend’s post many years ago* (we had only begun chatting at the time, and I was constantly freaking out about the crudeness of my English) where he told a story about sending birthday greetings to one of his postdocs and deciding to play smart and do it in the student’s native Spanish. By mistake, he congratulated the guy with Christmas. “Sorry, wrong person!” he said. I laughed my head off.
He has always been like that—quirky, eccentric, and ridiculously funny. Another friend of ours said once that his sense of humour could be even more surreal in places than the common English one, and it says a lot about his personality.
His calm demeanour is precious; his quiet kindness is incredible. He is also that type of a person around whom you can be yourself—unpretentious, thoughtful, without any fear of being judged with the slightest smirk. No snootiness or bitterness from him: unlike me, he isn’t suspicious of people’s intentions and behaviours.
I have mentioned it many times, of course, but his powerful scientific mind has never ceased to fascinate me: I’ve stumbled across different (say, weird and wonderful) places on the Internet where I saw the references to his name—with the same gasp of admiration.
And he deserves all of that. I repeat it again and again: angels don’t need fluffy wings in real life. Their smile is reassuring and priceless.
Happy Birthday, мой дорогой.
__________
* Facebook wasn’t too pointless in those old times: fewer holy wars, more fun and games
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