Bowling Ball Cream de la Menthe - Steven Turner
Steven was Jai’s roommate in Boulder and as he puts it, “Covid 19 cellmate”.
One of the personality traits of Jai that stood out more than anything else was his intelligence and quick wit. The times where this stood out the most to me was when we collaborated on pranks or mischief.
In July of 2020, we had been trapped in the house for 3 months and really starting to go stir crazy when we hatched an idea. Our other roommate Kelly received a home chef box as he gets a few times a month. The idea popped into my head that we should swap out the contents with some random items to mess with him(I’m such a thoughtful roommate). Normally I would have the idea and move on but having Jai around fueled my prankster ambitions. I immediately knocked on his door and presented the idea to him where it took him all of about 1 second to be onboard. He put the breaks on his homework and we were off.
Earlier that day we had done some yard work trying to get rid of all the thistles that were getting caught in Ralphs fur. We had one key ingredient. I had cleaned out my car recently and came across my old bowling ball and it seemed just random enough for the project. We looked around the area and found our remaining ingredients of light bulbs, salt, and a Dr. Pepper. Feeling pleased with ourselves we put the collection in the box and were ready to package it up but it just didn’t feel right. We needed to have instructions for what to do with all the ingredients.
At this point we delegated tasks to be as efficient as possible so I went to work on doing a photoshoot and then sat down writing out the instructions. Jai took the role of editor and graphic designer so once I was done I sent all the information to him. He added some steps and fixed my poor grammar then got to work building a design that looked identical to the recipe that comes with it. I’m sure his friends in the capital have seen him work in this manner but it was a first for me and I was blown away. He took the photos and google document of raw info and had it laid out in the final format in less than 15 minutes. We then fine tuned it to look exactly the same with the correct words in bold and adjusting the minor details. We packaged it up and left it for the roommate to find at 3am after a long shift. Jai’s trickster mind and skills made the silly prank into a work of art. I will forever miss having him around to bounce ideas off and collaborate with.
