Wednesday, February 9, 2011

In My Limited Experience

Never played with That Guy. Never saw his trenchcoat.

Never been to a con.

Never ran a game for strangers.

Never knew who the 'jocks' were in high school, never knew who the 'nerds' were.

Never got called a nerd.

Never had a crush on a cheerleader, or knew anyone who did. Never lived in a suburb, never borrowed dad's car, never had a car.

Never got locked in a locker.

Never said 'pwned'. Never knew anyone who said 'pwned'.

Never read a genre novel written after 1980.

Never played WoW.

Never called anyone 'bro'.

Never had a munchkin.

Never told a girl she couldn't play. Never saw anyone tell a girl she couldn't play.

Never played with anybody who called anything they thought was lame 'gay', except Kimberly Kane, who fucks girls and likes watching guys make out with each other.

Never got static from a girl about liking girls. (Or painting them naked. Or fucking them for money.)

I've known one rules-lawyer and she's my girlfriend.

Never read Penny Arcade, Order of the Stick, and whatever that comic is that's in Hackmaster.

Never saw Firefly or Serenity or the new Battlestar Galactica or Buffy.

Never argued about Kirk V. Picard or saw anyone do it.

Never willingly had an extended conversation with someone who acted like Comic Book Guy.

Never knew a grown-up who lived in his mom's basement.

Never thought only assholes played paladins.

Don't know what this 'I cast magic missile at the darkness' thing is about.

Never waited for a video game to come out.

Never got obsessive about a first-person shooter.

Never knew what day of the week my comic books were supposed to ship.

Never played a game with a skinny Peter-Parker-looking guy with glasses.

Never played a game with big fat guys with beards, except once, for charity. They were nice and didn't smell like anything.

I live in a big city. I always have. Once in a while I pull out a game and play it with my friends. They're all artists and sex industry people. When I was a kid they were all kids and they acted like kids.

When I hear people talk about 'the gaming community', it sounds like an insane towel-snapping locker room circus full of people nothing like anyone I've ever willingly spent time with in real life or ever will meet in real life who live in a Cheeto-strewn country called 'the internet'. I don't feel connected to them or disconnected from them or responsible for them or to them. Whatever. It's like seeing all that red on the map every November 2nd. Those people are also Americans? Huh, who knew?

I'm sure they exist. I just don't feel like they have some special significance to me just because we both own dice that aren't part of a Monopoly set. I'd be surprised if a lot of the people reading this didn't feel exactly the same way.