As much as I loved most of my team mates, I needed the time during lunch alone so that I could recharge my batteries before the afternoon grind. By our fifth month of production, John and I's design duties were beginning to become more than we could stay ahead of. Fortunately for us, there was someone at Dynamix who was itching to climb out of the testing pool, and was willing to do whatever designer grunt work we handed him.
Whenever I think of Tim McClure, I always picture him in the same moment. He's young and frightfully thin, scarcely more than a skeleton. Long, straight brunette hair frames his pale boyish face that's sprinkled with almost imperceptible freckles. There's an impishness in his eyes that gleam behind a pair of round Harry Potter-style spectacles. Perched on the top of a desk like a crow, he thoughtfully stares out of our office windows streaming with water. "I f@#%g hate rain," he says to me. He gives me a look like there's something I can actually do about it. "It's AWFUL." I helpfully point out to him that rain is kind of Oregon's schtick. "You really shouldn't hold your feelings in all the time," I tell him. "Honestly, how do you REALLY feel?"
Tim was not a man that was shy about expressing his opinions. He had many. After weekends he'd come in to talk about a movie or a TV show or a game he'd played, and we'd all get a critique about everything that was wrong with it. He loved Fist of the North Star and hated J.R.R. Tolkien. He seemed to be passionate about everything he came into contact with, and he was either your mortal enemy or your fiercest friend. Thankfully for me, I fell into the latter category. I always saw him as a little kid who simply hadn't learned how to lie like an adult. If I needed an honest opinion about something I was doing, I could always rely on Tim for his unvarnished answer.
