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My breakfast cereals and those crunchy peanut butter sandwiches are meals I remember very well. Dinner was always forgettable and I think it’s because it was never the same thing everyday. Damn I love my parents.
~
I remember the school bus trips very well. The driver always had a hammer she used as a gavel. She’d give a speech and start with a smash and end it with two thwacks. The blunt sound of metal on metal always gave me headaches.
~
They had a boat coming out of a wall overlooking the class room in my kindergarten class. Thinking about it now, that was one hell of a class room for kids to run around in. You could see everything within that room from the bow of it and if you looked down they had this play kitchen with a bed and real light up appliances. Dowers of fake food and utensils it was pretty intense. The teacher’s desk was right in the middle of the room with two large metal cabinets. The drawing tables which were trapezoids linked into a very cozy octagon, the stairs and bench for our morning greetings was this carpeted bench built right into the wall. The wall itself and flooring in front of it were all carpeted in something that looked like one large piece. Show and tell was the last Friday of every month and I always brought a plushy with me.
I can recall recess being a Sonic The Hedgehog role-playing game and I didn’t even own a Sega. I got in trouble playing that game. I ran around really fast and no one could calm me down. It got to a point where I literally melted a hole into the snow one winter, and someone tripped in it. Just so happened the person I was playing the game with was a character from the game and we were told not to play it.
I couldn’t resist playing it. It was so fun to pretend to be a super fast blue, spiky, cool guy. My sidekick Tales was a girl named Suzy. We were going back to the classroom from gym class, which was mostly jump rope, and we got in trouble because I told her we couldn’t play anymore. She said something like “Common Sonic it’s fun!” and I reached over and pulled her hair. I said,
“The games over because you can’t fly now, I took one of your tails off.” She started crying and that was that.
I don’t remember that week or the rest of French school up until the point where my brother Leighton had to leave because he was certified ‘illiterate’ and ‘unable to complete his grade’. He was sent to an English school and I remember having to go as well. To this day I don’t know why but I remember weeping. I couldn’t stop and I wouldn’t stop. I cried for days as I can recall. I was too hysterical to get on the bus and teachers picked me up and put me in it.
~
I learned to read and write in French for the first several years of my life, switching to English school was a difficult transition. In Grade Three, the first year I experienced hell and English school everything seemed to get messed up. My teacher MS. Stratson was a strange woman with awkward ideals. She was the sort that gave kids with skin conditions slips with her personal home remedies on them. Remedies and her home phone number of course. In the event the child in question didn’t want to show the note to the parents or guardian they would be writing lines the next morning.
MS. Stratton split the room into two groups. Group A and Group B. Segregation was a new to me because in French school we had always worked together. I questioned it once and she made me stand up in front of the class and give a speech about how she’s correct and I’m wrong because I’m small. She hit me on the head with her yard stick and I gave her a glare. She said “Don’t look at me like I hit you and sit down!” I told my parents about it that day but nothing happened.
I was in Group B and by this point it was asserted that Group B was the ‘bad’ group. I had a girl who could barely talk and was taking speech therapy lessons in front of me. A large temper mental child to my right, who at one point actually tried to throw his desk at the teacher because she wanted to make a boys and girls group, He yelled;
“I don’t want to be in a group with no girls!” while trying to pick up his desk. Having it spin out of his hands he dropped it and started to cry. Realizing he couldn’t lift his desk he sat back into it. A kid in Group A named Andrew got under his desk at this point, rolled into a ball, and started to scream. The principle and vice principle were called in to help with the chaos. The principle trying to coax Andrew out from under his desk. Andrew yelped,
“Don’t touch me!” Andrew did this more often as time went on. Usually without provocation and generally when the teacher was trying to teach something. I recall several times when the Principle and Vice Principle had to forcibly take him out of the class room.
This is the same year I started getting therapy, social work, and psychological evaluations.
English school was not fun for me. For the rest of the time I recall pretending a mouse was in the room in Grade Four which had my teacher evacuate the class and move all shelving that touched walls.
And Grade Five. This teacher had a temper, a very terrible temper problem, and he favored the room split as well. He would hit kids and yell ferociously all the time, for almost no reason. I recall a time when someone dropped there pen, which was new this year because everyone had to write with pens for this guy. Only blue pens were aloud and anything else could get you detention. So this kid drops his pen and the teacher yells at him to pick it up. But he can’t find it. He’s searching around his desk and he starts to panic. The kid breaks out into a sweat and goes red. The teacher approaches him still yelling and boom! He vomits all over his desk. It’s right after lunch and there is so much of it his entire table top is covered, and it’s thick. I’m on the other side of the room looking at this and I’m just in awe at how much vomit there is. This kid gets escorted out of the room and transferred to another teacher.
I had one altercation with this teacher. We had to sing the anthem every morning, had to. We couldn’t fake it because he would literally walk through the isles and put his ear to our mouths. I wasn’t singing one day because I had learned to lip synch very well. He took me into the hall and poked me very hard in the sternum. I stared at him with anger, “Don’t you look at me like that.” He says, leaning into me and breathing his coffee breath in my face. He pokes me three more times, “Why aren’t you moving.” He says with his teeth clenched. “Now you listen here, I’m bigger than you and you step back!” he pokes me again and it hurts. My eyes build up with tears and I take a step back to stop me from falling.
“Don’t hit me.” I say.
“I only laid one finger on you.” He steps back, I step forward and his anger just flushes away. I stand there rubbing my chest, wondering what the hell is wrong with English schools. “Get back to class and I don’t want to here you speak.”
I told my parents about the poking and my chest pain. It went on for awhile, but I just took it as a reminder not to say anything. Well, one day during the first week of health class when p***s, and v****a were still hilarious to say. He was saying p***s and v****a over and over until the class would stop laughing. When he was silent and laughing with the class I said, “It’s not really funny.” And I was given detention. I had to sit through ten minutes of boobies, breasts, and p***s, five more of v****a, and then we were told to talk about what we learned for the last five minutes. I didn’t say anything. I went straight to the office for my lack or sense of humor.
Detention was a desk by the photocopier. It was interesting because I would draw and get a glimpse of office life, well sort of anyway. It would last until every student was gone from the school, literally. My detention was over when the Vice Principle came over to my desk and said “They’re all gone. You can go now.”
I had detention a few times more for minor offences that year. Sometimes I would be at that desk until the secretaries had left, other times a secretary would turn around and see me, down the hall, sitting at a desk waiting for providence. “Are you waiting for anyone?”
“I have detention.”
“Who gave you detention?”
“MR. Guile.”
“He’s already left, you can go home now.” This wouldn’t be the first time he’d forget me.
I had a severe detention, an ‘in school suspension’ they called it. I was to sit at the desk all day the following day from morning till the end. I would spend recess, and even lunch sitting there. At the end of the day I would be moved to the resource room for another hour until all children had left the school grounds. I sat all day, I didn’t eat my lunch or get fresh air until six.
I wrote lines from nine a.m. until 12p.m. I wasn’t aloud to get my lunch because all the staff was away and the one person I asked told me ‘they didn’t know about my punishment’ and that I should ‘stay put and ask latter’, when I did ask latter ‘it was too late for lunch’ and I sat.
Three thirty and the bell rings. I hear screaming, laughter, bus horns, and staff members going about their business all on their way home.
The Vice Principle MR. Guile calls to me from his office, I go. He says “You know where the Resource room is. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes and I want to see you sitting, any noise that’s another half hour.” And I go.
Time passes. I hear nothing outside or inside the building. The windows have grates on them so it’s hard to make clear what’s going on. I can’t see much of outside but I’m afraid to get up, I can’t be caught standing. But I do it. No one is out there and it’s getting dark. I sit back down.
Waiting even longer made me fidget. I felt like I was getting sick and hungry at the same time. I put my head down and closed my eyes. I fall asleep.
I woke up in a daze. I couldn’t figure out if I was dreaming or not because it was so dark. I panic and begin to scream. I run toward the door and start to beat my fists against it. I keep kicking it and screaming, “Somebody please let me out!” I hear something. It’s a jingling sound. A janitor opens the door and I run right into them.
“What’s going on kid?” he looks at me for a second, he sounds panicked too. “You shouldn’t be here. Go home now.”
I didn’t think twice about it. I just put on my things and went home fast. When I got home dinner was done. My brother and parents had finished and asked me where I was. I said,
“Vice Principle forgot me in the resource room.”
“Oh really?” my mother says. “We already ate. We thought you were with a friend.”
The next day I went to school early, I waited outside the office until someone opened it and sat down at the desk in the back room. I waited until I heard MR. Guile go into his office. I went in and stood in the door way until he looked at me, “You forgot me.”
“No I didn’t.” he says.
“Yes. You did.” I’m angry, he knows it.
“I didn’t forget about you.” It’s strange because I swear I could see tears in his eyes.
“Don’t do that ever.” I pause and bring on some tears myself, “again.”
I get to my class and stand outside the door. The man with the sturdy index finger shows up and asks me what I’m doing.
“Don’t you ever poke me. It hurts.” He doesn’t say anything. He opens the door and I sit down at my desk before the lights turn on.
~
My brother and I got our first Nintendo sometime in elementary school. In between memories of being assaulted or forgotten by my teachers I was playing games happily. Video games, music class, and the library were very enjoyable.
My brother and I would compete to see who would be up earlier to play Super Mario Brothers. I woke up at six in the morning one day and found him playing. He had his blanket and looked really out of it. You couldn’t tell he was half conscious by his game play though, he was in control even if he didn’t look awake. We got in trouble because we were up before our Dad got up for work. We had the Nintendo taken away for a week. That was a really shitty week.
~
We have reached a point in history where all humans have an incomprehensible amount of ability met with possibility. A common problem that is both misleading and repressible is our perception of ability which when measured is observed as what we have done and not what we can do. The plinth of self exploration is at its peak. Humanities Pandora’s Box is open and its streaming live, twenty four hours a day.
The personal computer and internet has an insatiable appetite for souls. Video games and other remedial entertainment are amongst the highest in growing markets taking in billions of revenue annually in ever growing numbers. The use of video games and computers, automobiles, and telephones is a known common practice in today’s flourishing technology based society.
As numbers in a society grow so to do the sub cultures and minorities. As these cultures and minorities grow into mainstream and majority we see a crescendo of splicing alternatives. The guiding light to a difference which by means the new subdivide will come to ushering in a new era of complacence and appliance.
The future is the present. And you will get one every birthday and every Christmas, hopefully. Until you die.
~
My life has turned into an ever shifting mess of artificial reality. I’ve let go of my being and dived head long into a diversion. It has taken years from my life, inexplicably, years! Time I will never get back with which I derived ends and means do not exist! Thirty eight hours straight is bragging rights in a world where days and night don’t exist. The twenty four hour clock is an obstruction to the light and dark. It’s all the same when you look at curtains and leave lights on.
You can never tell the difference if you don’t want to care. Your objective is simple follow the mission guidelines until you mission objectives are accomplished by which ends you will then find another mission and succeed. You will succeed in doing nothing and you will feel damn proud for it.
I pay for this service and I’m going to use it. These companies make these things to sell them and I am going to purchase. My friends and I all have lives to live and it’s all without purpose. I want my objective. I want to succeed. I’m never going to leave my room. I’m never going to do anything.
~
“Hello, can I speak to Lucius please?”
“Yes you may just a moment.”
He coughs like he can’t handle it. He wheezes and gags like a last desperate attempt to breath, as if it’s his last breath. He doesn’t want to live you can tell. He sounds sick.
“Hello.” Lucius. Luscious Cranes we call him. Just to mess. He lives in his own filth like a wretched dog.
“Hey, how are things?”
“******** whatever.” He’s a fighter who loves fighting for the ******** of love and the love of ********, maybe even ******** fights. Whatever his logic is it’s stupid, demented, and sad. Usually.
“Do you want to hang out today?” That means ‘Let’s do nothing and like it.’
“Sure.” Lucius coughs again and gives one of those ‘I’m dieing gags’
“Be right there.”
Lucius says “Yup.
~
I’ve spent all of middle school with Lucius. Up until he stopped going to middle school. I used to eat lunch at his place and his mother would bring him lunch sometimes us. It’s because of Lucius’s mother Abbey that I found I liked bell peppers, olives, and baklava. Just some of the interesting things of three years time I had for lunch at their abode.
Grade six was the year of Daemon. It was all looting and repetitive spell casting everyday for an hour and a half a day for me. Who knows how long for him. Lucius was obsessed. He stayed home and played it casting the same spell, on the same enemy continuously, ceaselessly.
All the games he played shared several uninformative devices especially currency, treasure, and experience. Without experience you were either too weak to kill anything or too new to the game to have played it for any insubstantial amount of time. More kills meant more experience which then meant a higher level and incidentally a better class. The higher the class the more skills you had, with more skills you could use better equipment; such as items, weapons, and armor etc.
The game play never changed. What you started with is what you had for the whole game in my opinion. The exception of color change and stat differentials which coincided with your equipment class fluctuated with every new drop. It never went past the first set of armor or the first kill. It looked so similar. It was simple. Run, kill, collect, kill… continue.
~
The treasure was a superficial and frivolous at best change the color to weapons or armor which would generally leave your character tacky and mismatched. Stats let you have a greater effect on stronger monsters and vice versa to the meager short handed, low level monsters.
How can one person spend so much time sitting still? So much of life just wasted. To literally collect dust in front of a screen that never gives anything back?
You pay a fee for the electricity you use. It’s yours to do whatever you choose. You can harvest it if you like although the primary directive of subscription is the use of it. With your electricity subscription you can also purchase appliances with which you may also choose to subscribe; cable and internet more commonly.
Computers come out of nowhere and like the television everyone has to have one; otherwise you’re unlike everyone else, to be without class or merit. Like an earner not earning enough or an owner not owning enough we collect and purchase with intrinsic values we place on things, contraptions, and applications.
To subscribe we seek a purchase to which means we derive an application, an appliance to which we seek a use in subscription to the application. The condescending tyranny of it all is enough to make me sick. But I sit and I eat lunch with my friend. Watching him repeat himself I seek to understand his actions, trying to comprehend my own. What is he saying? He never said much of anything.
I ask myself why I stand this. I ask myself “Why am I sitting down…”
~
Lucius likes role playing games. He likes to take control of a character and go on quests, adventures and the like. RPG games employ the same game play mechanics as Daemon, currency experience, wasting away until the next big kill or find. Although RPG’s or rocket propelled grenades as the army calls them have more text than other genres so reading is fairly prominent in game play. It’s reminiscent of a fully interactive book in many ways. Most RPG’s have an ‘opened ended feel’ which more often than not lets you wonder aimlessly for hours without progressing the story. Stories of which are usually very convoluted and tacked on as RPG’s are one of the most prominent, highest selling, and oldest of video game genres. New premises and originality are very hard to come by as game play mechanics, such as wondering aimlessly, have become the corner stone of this society debasing franchise. Every story is different but the games are always similar.
You attack, the enemy attacks. The higher your level the more elaborate you can make your attack.
He rented a shooting game also known as a first person shooter, a fighting game, and an RPG. Sure dude, pull the pin.
“Hey John.” Lucius has his pajamas on. Looking out with his eyes wide like something unexpected has happened. John’s nose, ears, eyebrows, and chin are beaten red from the wind. He’s not in any discomfort but looks weathered.
“Ding dong yo.” John chatters letting out a jolt to his extremities. “It’s freaking forty bellow.”
“Negative fifty wind shield factor.” Lucius coughs a cynical gag as John moves in. His heavy black boots banging the door frame on his way in.
Squeaking doors shut. Footsteps. Sitting down. Another year goes by. Or at least it feels like it. Lucius is running in circles trying to avoid enemies which in this game happen to manifest themselves as one of three generic creatures which look nothing like the monsters you fight by the way. If you touch them the screen either spins into blackness or shatters and the battle begins. The music is of a high energy orchestra and the sound effects are lack luster at best. The creatures and the character Lucius has to play as take turns hitting the empty space between them. The music is epic, grandiose at best and the graphics are mesh. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. “So what’s the story in this one about?” Lucius is beyond transfixed.
“It’s a government conspiracy. They had these monsters all locked up and then someone let them out.”
“And then what?”
“You capture them in cards and use them as your attacks. It’s pretty cool.”
“Lots of cards I take it?”
“Like two hundred or something stupid.”
“It’s been done before.” Shouldn’t have said that.
“I like it so it’s worth it.” Lucius doesn’t give a speech about interest or opinion this time. “Oh he’s dead. Check this out.” Lucius hits some buttons and the screen lights up. A dramatic display of song and dance, colors, symbols, and sound effects stream across the screen. Numbers pop up around the enemies and they fade away. “That’s a special move I just got from the fourth boss already. It takes off so much. This game is retarded.” He almost sounds excited. “Hey check this out, look. You see how much damage I did? That’s constant. I’m only in like three hours but I take off like four thousand. It’s so easy.” Lucius goes to the save screen and the play time reads: Six Hours Forty Two Minutes Thirty Seven Seconds… Thirty eight seconds…. A chime sounds and it’s off.
~
I’m missing my sense of accomplishment as I kill him in repeatedly violent ways. Punching and kicking him to the ground, throwing him from one end of the room to the other. Breaking his neck and hearing the beautiful crunch of a severed vertebra does nothing. I feel no effects of my actions I simply execute them. “Game over I’m bored.”
“What? What do you mean? Common let’s go.”
“Yeah let’s go somewhere. I want to do something.”
“Ok, let’s play the FPS I got.”
“First person shooters are all the same. It’s like you play as the gun. And have you ever noticed how you are always right handed? It’s messed up.”
“It has Co-Op mode.”
“What’s it called?”
“Crusaders Respell. It’s about a special operative unit that gets mowed down by government mutants and you have to find the survivors.”
“And destroy the source of the mutations ending the game in a climactic underground laboratory explosion.”
“Probably. It should be fun John. I usually rent good games; I wouldn’t waste my money on something I didn’t know much about. VGG gave it a five.”
“Video Game Guide is cooperatively owned and publishes propaganda. That’s what magazines are for. You read Nintendo Power before. It’s just a bunch of corporate self love. They tell you everything they make is new and improved innovations of whatever the hell, and it’s all the same crap. And people buy it. You buy it.” Lucius cracks a smile.
“Like The Land Before Time, it will never go away.” John keeps a straight face and lets out a sigh.
“Exactly and it’s bland. Land Before Time has like fifteen movies out.”
“I thought it was twelve or something.”
“I don’t know dude, doesn’t matter.”
~
I remember a time when reviewers didn’t matter. When playing games was all about personal exercise to see what was good or not. Lucius had always had video game systems and computer. I did not. I grew into them.
In grade six I hung around a guy named Steven who was in my home room class because he had a Sega and a super Nintendo. He was an awkward kid in class because he would get in trouble for not doing his work. It usually resulted in a principle coming to get him and escorting him out of the class. Our friendship didn’t last long. Along the way he gained a hatred for school and asked me in passing if I would like to burn my binder at the end of the year, I didn’t really take him seriously but I said sure. At the end of the year he thought it would be a good idea if we set them on fire right away. He literally wanted me to run to my place with him, get some matches and burn them. We set them on fire with only one match and within a moment it was a ball of flame shooting embers into the air. The unfinished ceiling of my garage was all but rafters and exposed fiber glass. So we stamped them out and threw them behind my next door neighbor’s garage and almost blew it up as a result.
About two hours after committing these shenanigans my father gets a frantic phone call from the neighbors saying I’ve burnt down their garage, committed arson, and that they had proof I did it with all the charred papers with my name on them strewn about their yard. As it is, the man next door is a mechanic so he had all kinds of oil, hydraulic fluid, and gasoline on the wall just on the other side of the fire Steven and I had started. A gas line linked to the house was also directly inside of that wall of which was very active. What I did could have been disastrous and it was very stupid.
I had to go next door with my parents and apologize for threatening their lives, the mans lively hood and hobby, and for the fact of the matter. I was also taken for a drive down to Steven’s place to tell his parents what we had done. Evidently his father wasn’t surprised which was strange. He told us Steven was out getting ice-cream and that he would be back shortly. We left and on driving home found him with single scoop cones in his hands. My Dad honked at him and he dropped one, it made me cry for some reason.
When I was in grade four a kid named Aubrey lived down my street. He had all kinds of Nintendo games and because of this I hung around him often, although I found him to be slow and dull. He had a speech impediment and was a year older than me, although you couldn’t tell. I borrowed his games a lot and usually had to hide them down the front of my pants to avoid his parents from knowing. A skill I used more frequently as years went on. Sadly doing this led me to taking games from him without asking using the same method. I would return them frequently to swap or another. I did this continuously until he moved away.
I fond out very early on I loved to read and did so very often. Mostly fantasy books and books with words too large to do presentations or books reports on as they would more often than not have to be dictated to the class, and if no one knew what you were saying you were a strange cast out. So I would muddle through book reports and start to do my school work a lot more lax than was necessary I think. I never really got a balance with it and adorned these droned the public feel of being a ‘know it all’ and years went on a ‘jackass’ as time progressed and years went by I found myself in middle school with the next generation of home play things in the form of a Nintendo 64 which was enchanting. I had my first girl friend who also enjoyed video games and also somewhere down the line went to French school with, she was a dull sort as well I found as years went on. I didn’t steal from her though. But I did borrow games publicly.
My teacher tried to get as much people reading as possible. Shed dress up like a haggard character with huge glasses and read us books as “The Reading Lady”. In latter years I’d question whether she was high.
Grade six was pretty interesting. I met up with a kid who was in group A in grade three. We walked to school everyday for the most part, and as a bonus sometimes we got rides. I liked the walk and refused them every so often. I was generally purposely late to arrive as well. This guy was also in my home room and we talked often. I also started to flirt with a girl in that room and thanks to his banter she became my ongoing girl friend of off and on for several years. I’d generally be sought after by other girls while with her, which would generally result in a temporary breakup and I’d be picked up right away by a girl I would call on the phone and hug at lunch time. I met a lot of nice girls.
In grade Seven, I had one of the hottest girls in school become my girl friend, as I temporary state of ‘dump’. I’d called this girl after school and we’d hang out during lunch. Going to English she and several of her friends crowded around me, I became really nervous and nearly dropped my books. “It’s been two weeks and you haven’t kissed me.” All I could muster was an,
“Oh?”
“Yeah well,” She said, “Are you tight or something?” I didn’t answer. She pushed me back and called me a looser. I dropped my books and nearly fell into a garbage can.
“What the hell was that?” I said, picking up my books. She ‘went out’ with me for two weeks.
Some guys would play football in a small stretch of land at lunch, I’d watch and take part in a tackle of the big guys here and there. It was fun but these females were always watching. So I started to hang around with them. They’d talk about there sexual misgivings and I’d listen, retort, and more often than not banter for the contrary. It was all in great fun. I liked them al lot. I sat with them every lunch that year.
Some guys would play football in a small stretch of land at lunch, I’d watch and take part in a tackle of the big guys here and there. It was fun but these females were always watching. So I started to hang around with them. They’d talk about there sexual misgivings and I’d listen, retort, and more often than not banter for the contrary, sharing in my own stories and questions. It was all in great fun. I liked them al lot. I sat with them every lunch that year and heard about every would-be relationship they had.
Unfortunately I gradually lost respect for them and they became disinterested in my company because I didn’t want to kiss them or touch them. Which was OK, but that’s when my brother started to call me f*****t, are word a lot of people I learned used. It was dropped pretty quickly though. That girl of whom I went out with for two weeks kept my phone number and apparently started to phone my brother. They went out, he went out with her cousin, and then he stopped calling me f*****t.
This is about the same time my brother got his favorite game for the Nintendo 64, Perfect Dark. Star Fox64 and Goldeneye had taken two years to complete fully which has become one of my greater memories of accomplishment and happiness. Perfect Dark has never be beaten fully, only completed. It doesn’t stand as an accomplishment at all, although it is one of the better games that I’ve enjoyed. Because I liked it and that fact my brother couldn’t beat it, he limited my use of it which descended us into wars over war games. Which was redundant but territorial fun, but I started sneaking play time with his games when he was ignoring them. He gradually ignored them more as time went on. I started to care less as well.
My grade six teacher shaved her head and started wearing long one piece dress shawl-like things and large hoop earrings on only one side when I got their. She wasn’t my teacher which was interesting. There was a man who taught beside her room, exactly adjacent as I recall. It was a corridor and was inset and it was completely out of site as soon as you started walking down the hall.. It was awkward architecture. Well this man and my grade six teacher would romp into each others classrooms, disrupting lessons and chit chatting. It seemed overly flirtatious to a lot of us students. Which it turned out to be. As the year progressed we learned she actually did have an affair and the man divorced his wife. She switched rooms and grades because of this ordeal.
All the girls I had ever had a crush on were hyped supersexuals who got felt up during science class. Many of whom I would learn had their breasts sucked on so hard by the pubescent males that they actually had given them severely damaged the connective breast tissue. Many of them experienced sagging, scaring, and popped veins which were at several points in the year evident.
I actually had a breakdown that year. It occurred to me one morning when a good friend wasn’t around at locker break. I was getting my things together and I was told by the new age grade six turned grade eight teacher that he fell ill after a hockey match. Apparently one of his kidneys had exploded and he wasn’t going to be around for the rest of the school year.
I used to watch him play video games, exclusively RPG’s and when I visited him, he was playing one. In fact he had been given a library of games to keep him occupied while fallen ill. The bandages grabbed his clothing and you could see the red under it from his operation. He told me of how they drained the fluid, how the fluid was mostly urine and blood and that it was all cool except that he couldn’t play hockey ever again.
He was a sports kid. He had scorer trophies, hockey trophies, and sport paraphernalia all about his living space. This was a shock to me as it was a literal shock to him.
I tried to hang out with him as much as I did but he became a shut in. He didn’t want to move, let alone go outside. He spoke little and I didn’t care. I just wanted to be there for him. Time went on and didn’t get any better. He would be in a depression for the rest of the time I would know him and our friendship would dwindle out slowly but surely.
Nowadays I feel like I’m in the last phase of consumption. I’m swelling up and ready to dive off the deep end. Through all of these new systems and format changes I’m finding it harder and harder to give a damn about the new product. It’s difficult to feel a sense of accomplishment when I’m simply rehearsing an engineered plot line that several million others have. I bet many of them felt some sense of joy upon completion. Like it was something to achieve and not just something you did in your spare time.
Nowadays I feel like video games beat me. They beat me to a pulp really. All my thoughts and memories of my early years are wasting away in front of a screen fulfilling remedial and mostly arbitrary tasks that don’t exist, have absolutely no tangible rewards, and somehow I tell myself I knew this.
All the while I don’t remember much of grade eight but I can remember NTHGTHDGDCRTDTRK. Somewhere between Mario and Zelda I forgot I was going to die some day and the therapy didn’t help. I became overly imaginative and I was put on anti-psychotics which put me through a hallucinogenic stupor through grade nine. Some great games came out, but I don’t remember any. I shared a locker with my banter buddy from grade six, the one who helped me hook my temp-girl. He was friends with the kidney exploding guy and as time would pass, which I don’t recall it doing because of my prescribed drugs, we started smoking marijuana and I got off the pills. We had a lot of good times, most of which I don’t recall. The video games, movies, and The Experiences throughout are blurred and unrealized. Grade nine would be the first year I would fail a class and it was by one percent. One percent and I’ve never gotten over it. I blamed the pot and my teacher’s ignorance. I felt like it ruined me.
Suddenly I was ruined. I became an underachiever and the therapy didn’t help. I played video games here and there but I drew and wrote more often than not. I had delusions of making cartoons but didn’t write any plots. I just joked around with things that actually didn’t make any sense. This humor would latter be coined as apparently many people in my generation were doing it. It became marketed and Family Guy does it. Self Referential Random Humor, or Manatee Jokes as I would accept to call them.
In Grade Ten I got off the pot and wrote excessively. For my English exam I chose a short story to portray the theme of justice. I wrote three and a half double sided foolscap sheets of story. I still have a copy of it.
 Bibbly · Sat Jan 31, 2009 @ 04:57pm · 0 Comments |
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