The Slightly-Odd Odyssey
of Sris Sriado

Sris Sriado is a friend of Josh and Jared's, and he's the person they think, talk, wonder, and hypothesize about most in the world. They have not gone a single day without mentioning or referring to him in some way in more than a decade. This is not hyperbole.

Sris met Jared in elementary school and Josh in high school, through Jared. At first, Sris was just Jared's friend, but soon he and Josh developed their own separate friendship that blossomed on its own. Sris and Jared went to every school together through college, where they stuck together through thick and thin. As adults, the three now live in different cities, but still keep in touch (even as Sris has made it extraordinarily difficult to do so).

Being friends with Sris isn't always easy, but it's never boring. He's a mix of completely conflicting, often unpredictable traits. He can be sweet and gentle one moment and brash and cold the next. He is kind and considerate, but at the same time, rude and distant. He cares way too much about things that don't matter and not nearly enough about things that do. Sris knows more than anyone about a few very specific topics, and less than anyone about many others. In some ways, he is very skilled and independent, and in others, completely dependent on his parents and church.

Everything he says and does is instantly memorable, often because it completely defies any sort of convention. His topics of conversation and his social faux pas are so outlandish that they've become common talking points in Josh's and Jared's families. These are just a few… hundred.

Who is this guy?

These essays can be unwieldy, so here's an encapsulation of Sris's life so far.

He was born and raised in Miami, where he took to playing piano from a young age. He loved movies and video games, and was a builder and tinkerer. Sris was shy around family but pretty outgoing with friends at school. With his friends, he loved anything cartoons, dodgeball, kickball, and internet humor. Sris was known for getting straight As through most of school.

As a teenager, Sris started to embrace Catholicism and became more active in church youth groups. He didn't always fit in with other teens, but he tried to keep a good attitude, spending more and more time with church friends. His parents' divorce tested him, but he made it through okay.

Sris went to the University of Florida in Gainesville for psychology, and while in school, played keyboard in jazz bands and for a Tom Petty cover band. College was an interesting time: he grew more and more religious, but also branched out and socialized with more different kinds of people than he ever had before (and since).

After graduation, he pursued a Masters in Music from Florida State University – and that's about the time Josh and Jared stopped seeing him day to day.

With the degree, Sris settled down in Tallahassee. He worked for a music store and continued to stay active with his faith. In the late 2010s, he met his wife Cheryl through a church retreat. They married in 2018 and now have three children.

Sris used to work for a local bank, doing something with fraudulent transactions. He now works in the Florida government and continues playing in local bands. He's taken up more instruments and does music production for random people.

What's in a name?

Few know this, but Sris was born “Kris.” Sure, “Sris” was always his destined nickname – but it took a summer school P.E. class prior to his freshman year of high school for it to officially happen.

Jared and Sris were in that P.E. class. It happened one day when their teacher, Coach Plyler, was calling out students' names as he handed back written assignments.

“Kris Sriado?” he called, mispronouncing Sris's last name, Crxxdx. Jared and Sris both found the gaffe funny, as they had never heard anyone have trouble with the name before.

Sriado. Something about it stood out. Jared liked it, and decided to keep using it. But Sris's name had alliteration, and he wanted to maintain that. So he renamed his friend “Sris.” The name stuck and they never looked back.

In fact, the name stuck so well that there are many people in Sris's life who, to this day, don't know his legal name at all. (Josh and Jared have called him Sris for so long and with such consistency that Sris's own wife grew very upset about it.) Most people who have met Sris through Josh and Jared have no idea who “Kris” is.

At the same time, many can't understand the name Sris or hear it properly. Josh's parents call him “Swiss.” Ryan B. called him “Swish.” Others have misheard the name as “Srish.”

Jared would occasionally try to fool people into thinking “Sris” was a real first name by saying it was Haitian, fitting with Sris's mother's cultural background. Nobody cared.

Though he is usually too puritanical to joke around, Sris actually embraces and uses his nickname happily — to the utmost chagrin of his wife.

Other derivations inspired by the moniker are “S-Man,” “Señor Is,” and “Sristo.” And of course, Sris's middle name was given the same treatment: Salexander.

He's a good person

Let it be known: above all, Sris is a kind and gentle person. He may be full of all kinds of idiosyncrasies, but he is harmless. He isn't loud or showy, and doesn't demand attention. While he does hold very strange viewpoints about all kinds of things. . . he usually keeps them to himself.

The words in this collection may paint Sris in a negative light. This isn't intentional; the stories are simply to document all that has stuck with the guys over the years. But still, there are plenty of positive qualities about Sris.

Sris has always been himself — period. During the times he's met new people or tried new hobbies, for example, he's never molded himself to fit what he thought others wanted to see. He's himself whether he's at church, in class, at a party, or at work. Touring central Florida playing music. . . meeting friends' parents. . . he doesn't put on an air of sophistication. He's just Sris. He's never tried on different personalities or gone through typical teenage phases. You've always known what you're getting, every time.

This extends to his interests, too. While Jared has tried and abandoned all kinds of activities over the years, Sris never has. He loves piano, classic rock, and jazz. He's an outdoorsman who likes to fish and hunt. He's always been this way, and he's only gotten better at all of these pursuits. In recent years, he's added guitar, woodworking, parenting, and music production to his repertoire — and he's excelled at them, too.

Speaking of everything he does, Sris simply does it with no excuses. As long as the guys have known him, he's been able to focus and work without distraction. Whether it's studying, doing homework, practicing an instrument, or doing household chores, Sris doesn't procrastinate or cut corners. He's not someone who lies around thinking about the best way to start a project. He just does whatever it is he has to do, period.

As unbecoming as he may seem in the following stories, Sris is a very good person at his core. Sure, he's insane, his views are questionable, and he has trouble standing up for himself, but he means well. He doesn't like ruffling feathers and would rather stay quiet than use his words for harm. As Josh loves to say, “He's a good person.”

His name is Sesis

After Kris's rechristening into Sris, it was only natural that the naming structure might spread to his little brother, Kevin. Jared started calling him “Sevin Sriado.” At the same time, Sris had already started calling him “Kevis,” for unknown reasons. Combining the two, they arrived at the name “Sevis.” By that point, because the other consonants had already been converted to the letter S, Jared figured they might as well switch the V as well, which is how they arrived at “Sesis.” (No, not “sepsis.”)

Nowadays, though, Jared is the only one who calls him by that name. Even Josh once said, “I'm not calling him that,” while Sris says he's “too mature” to use inside jokes anymore. In order for the name to be more convincing, Jared used the aforementioned trick he used with Sris's name, telling people that “Sesis” was Kevin's Haitian name (and properly pronounced “seh-CEASE.”)

The pet hamster, the finches, and Chacha

When Sris was little, something happened that made him so sad and embarrassed that he never told Jared about it. Jared only found out many years later, from Josh, corroborated by Sris's mom. Sris himself has still never brought it up.

As a child, Sris got a hamster as a pet. When his mom presented it to him for him to hold, Sris excitedly held the pet in his hands so tightly that he accidentally… squeezed it to death. This is not a joke.

Apparently, Sris didn't know his own strength, which would become a trend for him in later years. He loved his little pet so much that he couldn't control himself. Thankfully, the incident didn't seem to scar him too badly, as he went on to have a dog and finches. Speaking of…

***

In the backyard of Sris's childhood home, his dad built a giant wooden caged birdhouse where he kept many common finches. They would live there, flying around, eating and playing. Sris loved going outside to visit them. He would feed and care for them, just like any non-hamster pet. He also liked sticking his arm through the cage door and waving it to get them to fly all around.

It wasn't clear exactly why his family kept the finches, but it added a bit of color to his backstory.

***

Then there was Chacha, Sris's family dog growing up. They adopted the American Brittany spaniel when Sris was in middle school, and he and Sesis loved her. The family named her Chacha after the way she wiggled her bobbed tail around when she was excited.

Chacha was a very sweet and friendly dog, and Sris showed her a lot of affection. But again, it seemed like he didn't know his own strength, because he would give her playful pats on her back and belly that ended up being more like smacks.

Chacha was not spayed, as Sris's dad purportedly planned to breed her. This meant that twice a year she would go into heat and Sris would often have to clean up after her.

Sadly, Chacha died young. It was a huge loss for Sris and Sesis — not just for obvious reasons, but because their dog was one of the main outlets they had to show a softer, gentler side.

His absent extended family

When Sris was younger, he spoke fondly of extended family members, like Tio Ray, several aunts known only as “Titi,” cousins Ray Jr. and Jay, Brianna and Gianna, “Coconut,” and others. Unlike his more immediate family members, he always had positive things to say about this group, most likely because they weren't around to traumatize him very much.

Sris once excitedly told a story about how Tio Ray was in an episode of Trading Spaces. Jared wanted to watch it but Sris could never find the episode anywhere. Sris said that all he remembered about it was Tio Ray walking out of a portable toilet and slamming the door. Nobody knows why this story in particular stuck.

Over the years, Jared would ask about the family every now and then and Sris would often have nothing to say. It seemed like as time passed, he saw them less and less often. This surprised Jared, as Sris used to really look up to Tio Ray in particular. Sris's impressions of his family became more and more negative until he was calling them insane, just like he did everyone else.

If asked today, Sris would probably say he has absolutely no idea what became of any of these family members. They weren't at his wedding and have presumably never met his wife or children. But Sris himself doesn't reach out, because in his eyes, they are “insane.”

Everyone has pet peeves, but Sris's annoyances absolutely consume him. The nature and peculiarity of what bothers Sris is random and very dramatic. He seems to fret over absolutely meaningless things, while not caring about things that actually matter. Insignificant jokes rile him up, and he takes it personally when people make honest mistakes. He also has strange hangups that seem to stem from nowhere at all.

Facebook pranks

As a prank, if Sris left his Facebook account unattended around Jared, Jared would change his status or even the spelling of his name. He liked editing Sris's name to “Chris Kxxxxx,” a spoonerism of his real name. Nobody even noticed the change, which annoyed Sris deeply.

Another favorite of Jared's was changing Sris's status to “I need to be committed to a mental institution.” It made Jared laugh and would always get a few likes. After one particular instance of this, Sris had a meltdown. Frantic, he said that his dad told him a potential employer might see it and that he'd never get hired anywhere. Josh and Jared both thought it ridiculous that either Sris or his dad would be thinking this way when Sris's profile was private and he wasn't actively looking for any employment.

Mysterious objects in his room

As a teenager, Sris bounced back and forth between spending nights at his own house and his dad's. Whenever he stayed at his dad's, he found that the spare bedroom doubled as a storage room. While it's understandable to be perturbed by not having your own dedicated space in the house, Sris was overly frustrated with the objects left on his bed.

Air conditioning units, lamps, books, basketballs — you name it, Sris found it waiting for him when he went to sleep. Whereas Josh or Jared would probably laugh, make a joke about it, or put the objects in the stepsiblings' rooms as a prank, Sris only steadily grew more enraged.

Asking out Andrea

Jared and Sris loved commiserating about their “low points”: girls they crushed on when they had nobody else to focus on, even knowing it was based on nothing and wouldn't go anywhere. For Sris, one of these girls was Andrea O xxxxx.

Andrea wasn't the most attractive girl or even the most interesting, but apparently she and Sris had some sort of classroom friendship. Sris started to like her, but wasn't sure exactly how to approach the situation.

One day, he called her (at home, on her family's landline), and made a bit of small talk. Then, out of nowhere and without warning, he asked her out.

There was an awkward silence.

“What?” she stammered, not even understanding what he was asking. “I don't —” and then she trailed off (or something to that effect).

Embarrassed out of his mind, Sris hung up immediately. Presumably, he never spoke to Andrea again.

... And going after Catie

Catie P.F. was Jared's high school girlfriend, and so she also became good friends with Sris. They two would often talk in the cafeteria when the group would eat lunch together.

Catie was herself a very kind, non-judgmental, and outgoing person, so her friendship with Sris was genuine, not just out of obligation to Jared. They really did get along well and she did care about him.

Apparently, Sris misunderstood this dynamic, though. As soon as Jared and Catie broke up, he developed a huge crush on her. He felt that their connection — a 100% platonic one — was actually something more.

Sris set out to pursue his best friend's ex without even talking to him about it first. But he wasn't being an asshole or breaking “bro code”; he genuinely did not know there was anything wrong with doing this. Of course, nothing ever came of it. Sris never shared his feelings with Catie, and Catie was most likely oblivious to his behavior altogether.

Josh had to let him down easy, because it was obvious that Sris had absolutely no chance with Catie. That wasn't an insult. It's just that the guys knew Jared's relationship with Catie ran much deeper than what Sris saw at lunch. They had a genuine connection based on shared goals, interests, values, and sentimentality. Meanwhile, Sris's outlook at the time was to pursue any girl that gave him any attention.

Baby powder at graduation

A week or so before Josh, Jared, and Sris's high school graduation, the student body was buzzing with excitement. They were proud of their upcoming milestone, and they didn't want to simply walk the stage — they wanted to celebrate in style.

A few bold kids started spreading ideas around about what they could do to make an impact at the ceremony. One idea that seemed to gain traction was for everyone to show up at the event with a bag of baby powder in their pockets, and at some predetermined point in the proceedings, they'd all toss the powder up in the air to make a cloudy display.

The ritual was reminiscent of what basketball star LeBron James did with chalk before games, and seeing as how he had recently led their hometown Miami Heat to two titles, the gesture seemed appropriate.

As the fateful day approached, everyone was let in on the idea and it seemed to be a go.

Unfortunately, the administration also caught wind of the plan. A couple of days before graduation, the principal announced that all seniors would be required to empty their pockets before walking the stage, and anyone caught carrying any sort of substance would not be allowed to walk. This pretty much quashed the plan on the spot.

However, there was one student who was very excited about the idea, and he did NOT seem to hear the administration's warning: Sris. He showed up to the venue that Saturday afternoon with his cap, gown, and a hefty baggie full of baby powder in his front pocket.

When Josh and Jared told him about the principal's ruling, Sris started to have what could only be described as a mini mental breakdown. He was sweating and hyperventilating, unsure of what to do, fearing that he would not graduate. As each guy had a different placement in the line of seniors, Josh and Jared had no choice but to leave Sris there alone.

Before parents and families were let in to the auditorium, the principal announced a sort of amnesty policy to the students. Anyone holding baby powder could turn themselves in and not be punished.

Of course, Sris Sriado was the only person who turned himself in.

Apparently, everyone else either knew not to bring in the powder, or they had simply tossed it out earlier in the afternoon like any reasonable person would have.

Fortunately, Sris had the wherewithal to turn himself in privately, and as promised, he wasn't punished. Unfortunately, he was still embarrassed, as he was made to sit away from all the other students, in a corner where the principal could keep an eye on him. He looked like a big kid sitting in timeout as he hung his head in shame throughout the ceremony. When it came time to walk the stage, he was made to do it separately, long after his fellow music students had taken their turns. He walked with a very sad expression.

He may not have technically lost anything, but Sris was extremely and thoroughly humiliated. The incident stayed with him for many years after.

As Josh would go on to remind him, Sris could've easily just tossed the baby powder out at any point in the day, like the other students. There were several moments, from when the guys first told him he'd get in trouble, to even as the principal announced the amnesty policy (as he could've simply asked to go to the bathroom and gotten rid of it there).

For whatever reason, Sris felt that because he had intended on going through with the act, he had to remain honorable and see his punishment through. As was common with Sris at that time, he was so paranoid about getting in trouble, he really did think that administrators would sift through every trash can on the premises and somehow tie the discarded powder back to him. He feared they'd not let him graduate, have his college acceptances rescinded, blacklist him from ever working, or worse. This is not an exaggeration.

Open house with Ms. Streeter

At the beginning of every school year, Coral Reef had an open house night. Much like any school's open house, parents could go to school at night and meet their children's teachers. Students could go too, if they wanted.

During freshman year's open house, instead of accompanying his own parents, Jared decided to follow Sris's mom, Sandra, through meeting Sris's teachers. This was, of course, something only Jared would do.

Sris's math class that year was algebra, taught by Ms. Streeter, a tall, middle-aged, midwestern white woman with a short haircut and folksy accent. At open house, she led a very thorough and lively discussion of the world of algebra. (One of Sris's favorite Streeterisms: “That's a FLAAG!”, she said referring to red flags students might exhibit if they're falling behind.)

All along the way, Sris's mom asked a ton of questions. She seemed genuinely concerned: she wanted to know everything from how to help him study, to how assignments and grades would work, to how to communicate with the teacher. She asked many more questions than any other parent in attendance. It was sweet, and very much a mom thing to do.

Jared didn't know it at the time, but this brief period of time during Ms. Streeter's open house night would become a lasting memory. Not for Sris's mom, but for Jared, of course.

Years on, Jared found it endearing that Sandra would care so much about Sris doing well in this freshman math class — something that would ultimately be of absolutely no consequence. Who cared, really So what if Sris failed the tests, or didn't do the work? And so what if Sandra couldn't easily communicate with Ms. Streeter? Would Sris's life have gone any differently? Sris was already a perfectly fine student. Would doing any better or worse in this one math class mean anything to his life?

It became very philosophical for Jared. Of course, every step a parent takes to help their child do better in life adds up, and it's hard to single out any one particular step as monumental. But there was something about the deep level of concern Sandra had for Sris's achievement in this one class that felt so completely irrelevant.

Sris did go on to do perfectly fine in the class, and it did not affect him in any way after that.

Big balls

In 2017, Josh, Sarah, Jared, Jared's girlfriend at the time, and Sris took a trip to Busch Gardens in Tampa.

On the trip, they all shared a single hotel room, with each couple taking a bed and Sris using a roll-out cot.

One night after visiting the park, they decided to drink a little in the room. This was absolutely not a big deal, as they weren't planning anything further by it. They probably consumed the equivalent of two drinks each at most.

Strangely, Sris got visibly hammered. While nobody expected anyone to get drunk that night, if it was going to happen to someone, it would be Sris. None of the group had ever seen him so intoxicated, and it came out of nowhere.

Sris then steered the conversation toward sexual topics. Apropos of nothing, he volunteered something about himself that nobody asked or cared to learn. He said that, like other men in his family, he had “big balls.”

Literally. For no reason at all, he told the group that his testicles were abnormally large.

He also added that while his balls were big, his penis was, by comparison, small.

That was it. That was the whole story. Sris had no further point from there. Everybody stared at him before chuckling uncomfortably. Sris seemed proud and confident of the piece of trivia.

The guys figured that Sris saw his story as something young twentysomethings would talk about when they were drunk and feeling crazy. Since then, Sris has actually come to regret the trip, saying that Josh and Jared ganged up on him. But it doesn't explain why he mentioned his genitalia.

Brian, the illiterate piano teacher

In middle school, Sris took piano lessons from a jazz teacher named Brian. He seemed like a normal guy, save for one strange quality: he was a horrible speller. Even though he was born and raised in the United States speaking English as a first language, the man could not spell simple words to save his life. On more than one occasion, he misspelled “posture,” as in, what's necessary to maintain while sitting upright at the piano. He spelled it “poster.”

Nobody knew where Sris found the guy. Nobody knows what happened to him. Sris seemingly doesn't care.