Well, here's another way I could begin.

Okay.

My best friend asked me to help him die.

That's Rob, and this is Rumblestrip, Vermont.

Rob Merman and Bill Morancy lived in neighboring apartments in Montpelier, Vermont.

They were best friends. And as he said, Rob did help Bill die. And this is their story. Welcome.

Bill moved into this apartment house a week before I did, so we became neighbors. I would go knock on his door for things and he would knock on my door. In fact, it got to the point where at one point he moved to the apartment below me.

So in order to contact him, I would take a broom and bang on my floor and he would take a broom and bang on his ceiling and replying we had this code of you want to come out and play, that kind of thing.

And we would go out and play baseball, we'd play catch, we would play paddle ball, we'd play tennis.

We never kept score, and there was no competition.

Everyone else who wanted to play with us always wanted to keep score and we said you can't play with us then.

This is our ball and we're taking it away.

One day we were playing tennis.

The Rec Department had taken down the tennis nets.

So there are no nets.

And at one point we had a spalding, one of these pink rubber balls that we had when we were kids,

high bouncers, and we were playing with that on the court that had no net,

whacking it back and forth.

It went so far, it went over the 30 foot fence.

So I went around the fence to get it.

And then from that other court, I whacked it as hard as I could to get it. And then from that other court I whacked it as hard as I could to get it

over the fence back to him and he whacked it back to me so suddenly we're like

...