The Slightly-Odd Odysssey
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.”

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.