No one can spice up the mundane greeting “Hey!” like Pedro can.

This guy makes it sound so sincere that you want to say hey back, sit down and talk about your day with him. But instead, this guy will probably ride away on his flashy gold penny board, and you’ll spend the rest of your days wondering what a cool guy like Pedro does in his free time.

At least, that’s what I do.

He often wheels through the lounge at any given hour of the night, sometimes with friends. Becoming friends with people who live in the same dorm as you has its pros and cons. While you get to see each other much more than you would if you lived in different areas of campus, that dorm also limits the ability to get to know each other in other ways.

His tone of voice is just the right combination of indifference and sarcasm, and it somehow manages to carry through even in online group chat conversations. Pedro doesn’t lose himself when he’s behind a phone screen. He’s still Pedro.

Simple phrases like “me” and “I’m crying” and “I hate this” carry so much depth to them when uttered by him, that every time someone mentions his name, all I picture is his face looking up from his phone and saying “me” as his hand grips a mug.

One defining moment that led me to really appreciate Pedro came about one evening months ago when a group of friends was arguing about whether a rape victim should be called a rape survivor. It was a heated, passionate debate between two sides, and I remember Pedro calmly weighing in at one point to state his opinion.

It was refreshingly bold and stupidly simple. LIKE PEDRO!

The picture of Pedro and I? I remember that day it was taken. It was the weekend before the last week of freshman year. Our dorm had a Sunday brunch for all of the residents, and a group of my friends were sitting in a circle chowing down on bacon and potatoes and pancakes. When the conversation got around to my blog (I didn’t forget about you, btw Jeremy), Pedro said, “I better get a blog post,” and so we snapped this picture.

I got you, Champagne Peddy! Anyways, I’m so glad I got to meet you this year. I hope your birthday (weekend) goes amazingly. I’ll really miss walking through the lounge and randomly finding you playing that Kid Link game on the TV.