SUDBURY, ON ― Friends and family of 23-year-old Seamus Bryant are coming together to express their extreme shock and substantially more moderate grief for what they unanimously described as a “perfectly mediocre” young man. Bryant was hit last week while driving home from work.
“Seamus was a longtime friend of mine. We weren’t all that close, but he was definitely in my life for nearly a decade, so we couldn’t help but have some good times just from sheer volume, you know?” volunteered Jackson McKellar at the funeral. McKellar met Bryant in middle school and didn’t have anywhere else to be today.
“He was like if a personality test could come back negative.”
When asked what he’d miss most about his friend, he paused for several seconds with a puzzled look. “Oh, I’ve got it! I’ll miss having another person to split the bill with when I get together with our mutual friends. He always paid his share. If you could count on him for two things, it was that, and finishing third in pub trivia.”
Bryant’s closest friends agreed that it’s “sub-optimal” to see anyone die so young, but that precious few people ever distinguish themselves at any point in time, and he, in particular, showed zero signs of being the exception. His youth also ensures he’ll be but a distant memory by the time they hit their own lacklustre forties.
His parents similarly told reporters their son, a recent graduate of Brock University, was always chatting and friendly, but never had anything that interesting or insightful to say. He had vague plans to “go into marketing or something,” and like the vast majority of people, loved French fries and pizza, said his father, Michael.
His mother, Jeanine, added that he always got straight A’s in school, which she acknowledged was pretty meaningless with grade inflation the way it is.
The same was true for Bryant’s athletic ability, which involved playing basketball reasonably but not exceptionally well until his second year of university, and for his looks, which consisted of a rather nice smile, but not one that lights up a room, which is actually a much rarer quality than most grieving families would have us think.
“When you read the news, it seems it’s always our best and brightest who are lost to entirely random accidents. That doesn’t make much sense, but it still had me worried this would happen to his objectively better brother Kaden, so it’s actually kind of a relief,” Jeanine added. “I do wish I hadn’t wasted nine months of pregnancy, an agonizing day of labour, and two decades’ money and stress only for him to up and die, but the continued investment in his future was starting to be a sunk cost fallacy anyway. ”
Michael insisted he and his wife forgive the other driver. “That said, we want to remind people to drive carefully. Last week, it was Seamus, but next time, it could be a tragedy.”
