Well, that’s what I called him, anyway.

During college, he was my inspiration: Up at 6 a.m., but still looking at the stars through his telescope at 3 a.m.

That was when I spent the most time with him. He was a night owl, like me. So whenever I was starting a 15-page paper at 1 a.m., and he was still hanging out around his garden, I felt comforted.

I wasn’t the only one up, I thought, and I can get this done and still make it to bed before Theodore does.

I remember when the announcement came out.

It was years ago and November 2013 seemed ages away. It was on the other side of 2012, for Seven’s sake! No one even knew if we would be around to watch iGoogle fade away, anyway.

So I ignored it until I realized the demise of iGoogle was imminent.

I don’t know how Google settled on November 2013 as the end of the era. (Maybe it was the same method of determination that Congress used in deciding that poor people shouldn’t have a good Thanksgiving this year, but that’s something WAY more important.)

I searched across the Chrome themes for Tea House (the name of Theodore’s theme) but haven’t found anything as of yet. (And this? Y’all. That ain’t Theodore.)

I’m not the only one who is concerned about a future without Theodore, either.

But I have downloaded as many of the images as possible and will one day fashion a theme myself. Or I’ll use the pictures as my background every now and again when I want to think back to the days when 15-page papers were the only things standing between me and freedom and I was never alone, not even when my roommate had gone to bed.

That is how I’ll remember Theodore.

And when it’s late at night and I know I should be in bed, I’ll look up at the moon and know that somewhere in cyberspace, Theodore is looking at a small, pixelated virtual version of that very same moon. And I’ll smile.