Bullies, Griefers and Ignorance

In 1992 I went to Canada's Wonderland a lot. I went on the rides, sure, but I spent a lot of time at the arcade. 1992 was a fantastic year for arcade video games for three reasons, in my opinion: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men and Captain America And The Avengers. All three were sidescrolling action games where you fight through a bunch of little bad guys before battling a boss. Rinse, repeat a half dozen to a dozen times and, whammo, you've beaten the game.*

Doing well at these games requires reflexes, timing and an ability to figure out how the bad guys are going to attack and getting out of the way. I loved that part of these games, and could spend ten minutes on a single quarter before making a miscue and having to feed the beast again.

This was also the summer of Street Fighter II. On its face, it would seem to have all the qualities I like - reflexes, timing and strategy - but in practice, no so much. The game had six buttons in a time when most games had two, and your opponent was randomized, making it harder to get really good at it. Also some of the fighters were simply at a serious disadvantage against certain opponents. Still, I played enough to be familiar with the characters.

One day in the summer of 1992, I was rocking out at X-Men. A trio of high school seniors joined in with me and we fought our way through a few levels before two of them got bored and moved on. Adam, the one guy who stayed was obviously not all that familiar with video games and was fascinated by the way I played, beating seemingly impossible boss guys by moving and dodging at just the right moment.

We beat the game, and he asked if I'd stick around and show him how to beat the early levels. The rules of high school meant that I was obliged to anyway, but I was more than happy to stay - my nerdy self was proving helpful to a high school senior, which was somewhat unprecedented.

The X-Men machine was right next to one of the four Street Fighter games, the one with a little flicker on the right side of the screen. Now free from button-mashing, I noticed something. An older kid, maybe in his early twenties, was hanging out across from the game, waiting for someone to come up and play single player. If it was a kid my age or older, he'd leave them alone, but if it was a younger kid, he'd drop in his quarter, kick the kid around in the game a little bit and send them off frustrated. Then he'd throw the next round and settle back and wait for a new victim.

See, Street Fighter was set up to be played one of two ways. Either you'd play solo, fighting against a roster of bad guys until you get to the boss fight, or you'd fighter against another player. It was kind an unspoken rule that if someone was playing single player, you left them be until they'd lost to the same opponent a few times, at which point you could step in. You always asked, too. This guy didn't. He was stepping in on the games of kids a decade younger than he was for the sole purpose of making them waste a quarter. A griefer, in other words.

Griefers are people who take advantage of weaknesses in a game's program to frustrate other players. They don't necessarily care about winning, exactly, they just get pleasure out of aggravating people. Griefers are, in a word, annoying.

I dislike being around annoying people.

"Hey, Adam," I said, trying to keep my voice down, but loud enough to be heard in the arcade, "How many quarters do you have left?"

"Ten bucks or so. Why?"

"There's a guy who's picking on kids on that Street Fighter game."

"That sucks. You want quarters to beat him?"

"No, I want you to play Street Fighter."

At the time, I thought that Adam gave up at the moment because he realized the brilliance of my plan, but in fact he had just come to the Savage Land level on X-Men. Anyone who's played the game and had to fight off those blasted pteranodons can understand why he actually quit.

"I only know, like, one guy in that game."

I shrugged, and then lied. "I only know one guy, too. We play each other, there's three rounds, each a minute long if we play it right."

Adam smiled nervously.

"Dude, he's going to get mad."

"So what."

Adam smiled again, this one a conspiratorial grin, and walked over to the game.

We started playing around 11. For the first little bit, we would stand there dancing around the screen until 10 seconds left in the match, then go all out until the end of the round. The third round we'd fight beginning to end. After about half an hour of this, we were actually getting pretty good. The griefer was still there, though, when one of the employees came up and commented that we were taking up a lot of time on one of their most popular games.

I forget which of us said it, but either Adam or I pointed out that there was no line and that this game had a glitchy screen anyway. The employee nodded and prepared to move on, making the final cryptic comment, "I could beat you guys with Ryu's right arm anyway."

Gauntlet thrown. Gauntlet picked up.

We continued to pick our fighters as normal, but now also announced what moves we were going to use in our fight. Blanka, feet only. Honda, hands only. Guile, sonic booms only. We continued like this for a while until I realized there were two kids lined up behind us, and that the griefer was gone.

"Adam," I said, nodding to the kids as I hit his character with an uppercut that made a tiny Asian woman clap faster than nature would permit.

"K," he said.

The match ended, and we stepped away.

This was adolescence - I never got Adam's last name, and, so far as I know, we never crossed paths again. It didn't matter. We collaborated to take care of a bully in a way that works only under a few circumstances - we beat him by ignoring him.

On social media, as in life, there are people who feed on your frustration and anger. This is a terrible thing. For them, though, not for you. See, you can be a full, well-rounded person who is strengthened by friendship, by a relationship with God, by any number of things that aren't awful. These people who feed on frustration and anger? That's an awful way to live, but getting frustrated and angry about it is the opposite of helpful.

I'm not saying that all bullies can be beaten by being ignored - I've worn glasses since I was eight, started playing tabletop roleplaying games when I was nine, and have been a clumsy, pudgy guy who typically doesn't know well enough to shut up all all along, so I've attract the attention of a few bullies in my day.

No one has the authority to push you down, literally or metaphorically. No one has the right to make you feel like a failure just for being you, or the privilege of making you feel lesser. It's just not something given to humans that they ought to do to each other. And ignoring people who try, by yourself, probably won't work.

A few years before the story I relate above, I was a "minor niner," a freshman in high school, and getting picked on by a few older kids. I generally carried two or three novels with me at a time. One for light reading (Hitchhiker's was good for this), one for medium reading (something by Poul Anderson, at around that time) and one for heavy reading (I remember this time it was Timothy Findley's "The Wars," which I filched from my sister's room not knowing it was a book she was assigned for English class). They were thumbing through them and laughing, reading bits and pieces in silly books and threatening to rip out the pages.

Despite my status as a freshman, I'd caught the attention of some of the upperclassmen because, as mentioned previously, I talked a lot. Despite being a chunky kid, I held my own in the locker room when it came to banter and some of the guys, especially two of the wrestlers took a shine to the little guy who "talked above his weight class." It was when the fate of my books seemed most dire that one of the wrestlers came by. He took the books back casually, commenting pleasantly on each one and commending the bullies' choice of literature, and handed them back to me.

He clapped one of the bullies on the shoulder and said, "You guys have a great day. I really hope I see you around." The subtext in that last sentence was palpable - it was pretty clear that if he saw them picking on me again, bad things were going to happen.

I think it comes down to herd politics - if the zebras outnumber the hyenas, and have enough strength to hold a line against them, they can starve out the hyenas. So, do your part.

Know someone who's being bullied at school? Don't get angry and frustrated, that just feeds the beast. Walk with them. Encourage your friends to do the same, until that kid's rolling three deep between classes.

A victim of bullying? Put together your herd. Not a gang, not a fight club, just a group of people you can walk with. Try to get an older kid to walk with you.

A victim of bullying online? Here it gets tricky. We have this natural urge to talk back online, to defend our righteous position. That's usually a good thing, but here it's not. Ignore them, unfriend them, delete them, just put them away. Don't announce it, just do it, and once you only have your friends standing with you, it will get better.

None of these solutions are perfect, but talking with some friends online about bullying lead me to write this as these are things I've found worked for me. I had a bit of an edge, socially, that other people might not. Good luck out there.

* If anyone ever comes out with a game that consists entirely of 90s arcade game boss fights, they will have my undying gratitude.

"Holidays Around The World"

My youngest boy is going to public school rather than our church's Christian school. I've heard from several friends and relatives that they're concerned about rampant secularism in our educational system.

Naturally a lot of these concerns over secularism revolve around Christmas. Personally, I find it a little funny that in a country where the first colonists the kids learn about - the Puritans - were steadfastly against the practice of Christmas that there should be this much concern over how the holiday is taught, but that's an outsider's perspective.

For the most part, they haven't done a lot with Christmas. They made a gingerbread house (well, coated a juice container with chocolate and candies and made it into the shape of a house) and sang some carols in music class, but not much else. This week, we got the titular handout, "Holidays Around the World."

There are two periods of ceremony - Hanukkah and Kwanzaa - and five geographical areas - Mexico, Germany, US/Canada, Scandanavia and the Netherlands.

The ceremonies are pretty straightforward, describing the types of people most likely to celebrate them (Jewish people and African Americans respectively, of course), a brief description of a ritual like, "They celebrate the Festival of Lights by lighting one candle of the Menorah each night until all eight candles are burning together," and then talk about their food and gift-giving traditions.

This same is repeated for all five geographical areas. A description of the place, in this case, and then food, traditions and give-giving. The gift -giving in Mexico is by the Three Kings from the Bible account, while in Germany, Kriss Kringle gives gifts while Hans Trapp brings switches to the bad kids. The Netherlands Good Santa/Bad Santa team-up is Sinter Klaas and Swarte Piet. The US/Canada has Santa Claus, of course, Scandanavia has Little People who deliver presents - Sweden's is Juletomten, and Norway and Denmark have Julenisse.

And that's about it. There some detail given - apparently Dutch children has the tradition of leaving carrots for Sinter Klaas' horse, which is similar to the local tradition of leaving food for Santa's reindeer, which I thought was interesting.*

According to Bill O'Reilly, this is the part in the script where I tie my underwear in knots and have an attack of the vapours over the lack of reference to Jesus.

Nah. I'll skip that.

See, I don't really want my son's school to talk about Jesus. Their job is to teach him reading, writing, penmanship, arithmetic, music theory, singing, art, critical thinking, biology, chemistry, ecology, sportsmanship, teamwork, leadership and . . . well, a lot of stuff, okay. I'll teach him about Jesus. It's a dad's job after all (Ephesians 6:4), not the town's job.

Here's the US/Canada section in full:

"Christmas in Canada and the United States is a busy time of shopping, baking, decorating, and preparing for December 24. The week between Christmas Eve and New Year's is when most parties and celebrations take place. Families generally follow customs from their ancestors.

The gift bearer is Santa Claus. He lives at the North Pole with Mrs. Claus and the elves. They make presents and Santa delivers them in his sleight pulled by eight reindeer. Santa slides down the chimney and leaves the presents in stockings hung there.

Most homes set up a well-decorated evergreen tree. Brightly coloured lights are strung inside, outside, and on the tree. Sending Christmas cards is a popular tradition with many families, too, as is singing carols. Christian families celebrate the holidays with special church services on Christmas Eve and Day."

I'm really trying to figure out where, as a Christian, I'm supposed to find the bits that offend me here. Keep it up, Epsom Central School, and I hope your staff has a merry Christmas. (And if you want to wish me happy holidays, I promise I won't offense.

* For those curious, we never told our boys that Santa was real. We told them the story and let them decide if they thought it was true. Graeme only believed it for a year so, Brandon for less. They still love all the traditions associated with Good Saint Nick.

Actual People of Walmart and Merry Christmas

This Thursday, I went to Walmart. I don't like going there, but I did anyway, hoping to find a large bag of holiday M&Ms for a project in Brandon's class. *

They had a Salvation Army bucket at each door. There were two ladies at the bucket I was going to pass. One of them seemed tired and was sniffling a little, but she spared a smile for each person who passed by and nodded gratefully when someone dropped money in the bucket. The other one . . . I don't know exactly how to put this gently, but I think she was a cyborg.

See, I watch people a lot. I mean, I don't stare, but I take in details of people's faces because, as a writer, faces are an important hook for the reader. I look for interesting marks and hairstyles, but I also look at facial expressions and, in my head, try to sum them up in words as best I can. If I'm with Christy or someone else I trust, I might even share these words to see if I'm doing a decent job of it.

This woman looked like a cyborg. Her facial expression wasn't fixed, exactly, but it was artificial, like she was trapped in a Christmas card pose with people for whom she felt no genuine affection. She would turn that face toward each person who passed her, but her eyes were unfocused, unless you moved close and dropped something in the bucket, in which case she'd look at you, nod and say, "God bless."

I had twenty bucks in my wallet, earmarked for a pizza dinner on Friday, but I did a little quick math and figured that if I bought a slice of pizza inside, I could drop a dollar in the bucket on my way back out. Distracted by my thoughts, I didn't realize that the cyborg had turned its eyes on me.

"A donation, sir?" she asked.

"No, I . . ."

"That's fine, then," she said in a tone of voice I associate with prim schoolmarms who've just found a horse has dropped one in the parlour when there's a gentleman caller. ** "Merry Christmas," she said, evidently relishing the opportunity to hiss the Lord's name at me. I wasn't sure what my response was supposed to be, so I crossed myself and said, "Salaam alaikum," and went in. I didn't spare her a glance, but I heard the other lady snickering quietly to herself. ***

I navigated my way fruitlessly through the aisles of Walmart in search of my large bag of holiday M&Ms and, marginally disheartened, found myself at the takeout counter.

There was only one person behind the counter, a mountainous fellow evidently named "Lenny." **** His face looked well lived-in - pockmarked all over, craggy in spots, saggy in others with a crude, rough scar leading from his left ear to the side of his nose. He seemed tired, murmuring to the guy in front of him who was grossly abusing the store's policy on sampling, trying one of absolutely everything before walking away with the smallest possible container of the least expensive item. His eyes didn't rise all the way to my face as he said, "How can I help you?"

"Just a slice of pizza, m'man."

"Kay. Which one you want?" he muttered, gesturing at the lone pizza in the warmer - plain cheese.

"Chef's choice," I said with a shrug. His eyes were on mine in an instant, intense, practically glowing.

"Been a long time since I've heard that." The glow died quickly as he realized what he was doing. Everyone should glow all the time, is my thinking.

"You used to be a chef?"

And that's how Lenny and I passed the next fifteen minutes, with him telling me all about his days as a chef. He started as a line cook, worked his way until he was sous chef, and then the economy tanked and the restaurant went under. He picked up other food service jobs pretty quickly but he was, as he admitted, an alcoholic mess and eventually ended up with a three month tour of the local penitentiary system after getting drunk in a public park.

He's out, living with an ex-girlfriend ***** and trying to live straight. When he was done, he let out a great, long sigh, like he hadn't taken a breath the entire time, and smiled.

"Man, I never tell anyone that story."

"No worries, this happens to me - I think I was a bartender in a former life." I put out my hand for my pizza. "Can I pray for you?" Lenny's big hand fell on top of mine, pressing it to the counter.

"Please," he said, and bowed his head.

I'll be frank, I have no recollection of what I prayed for. The Spirit was doing an awful lot of groaning on my behalf. When we were done, I turned to leave, politely ignore the dampness in both our eyes.

"Hey buddy," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Merry Christmas."

I smiled.

"Merry Christmas, Lenny."

And God bless us, everyone.

I dropped a dollar in the bucket on my way out, along with the change in my pockets.

(The above is fiction - mostly. Well, it all actually happened, but not this neatly and not at the same time.)

* I ended leaving with a bag of glowsticks and two boxes of theatre candy. This is what happens when I go to Walmart.
** Hey, I said I try to sum up people's expressions - some are harder than others.
*** Was this the most mature way to handle the situation? No, probably not, but people who treat the chance to greet a fellow human as a chance to test them are bullies, and I don't like bullies.
**** His name wasn't Lenny. But it should have been.
***** "We aren't together or anything, she's just got three bedrooms and it's only her now," he said, as though I knew what this meant. I didn't, but I nodded anyway. I got the general idea.

Why I don't make oaths and Black Friday

There was a trend on my Facebook feed of people swearing oaths to not shop on Black Friday. In some cases it was in solidarity of retail workers, in some cases it was a moral choice, in one case I think it was done to impress a girl.

Someone asked me why, if I'm a nice person, I didn't agree to not shop on Black Friday.

That's because I will be shopping today.

First, we're going to a little hardware store up the road that has a really good sale on artificial Christmas trees. We really need a new one. They were open the day after the Thanksgiving last year and the year before and generally always are. Failing to go get this tree will have no effect on their business.

Incidentally, I'm willing to bet that it will either be Alan or Owen who'll ring up my purchase. Alan is a younger guy, maybe in his late twenties, working his way through school at the Tech for computer design, but he really likes robotics and rocketry. His dream job is working for NASA. Owen is old and curmudgeondly, built like a scarecrow - like half of a Wilford Brimley. He's also amazingly helpful and kind to people who're trying to fix a leaky faucet.

We'll also be going to Myriad Games. They have three stores in New Hampshire, all with common ownership. They have every board game, card game, dice game and RPG you can imagine, and a few you can't. They're amazing, the kind of business I really want to see prosper. They sent out a newsletter to their loyal customers asking them to come in today.

What with it being Christmas season, I'm happy to oblige.* They're good people.

So, this is why I don't make oaths. They seem like a good idea at the time. They're comforting and give one a sense of moral rightness, but in the end, for us it would mean a year with a decrepit tree and paying more Christmas presents.

* Yes, that means that if I know you and you're reading this, I might be buying you a game for Christmas. But you know me - this shouldn't surprise you.

The Doctor

In a blue box, somewhere in the universe, there's a madman. He's the right sort of madman, though, the kind who's constantly thinking, plotting, planning, running from one disaster to the next and saving lives. Not everyone - well, hardly ever everyone - but a lot of people.

He doesn't have a gun, the closest he's come to armour is a wool coast and though he's more scientist than soldier, with his intellect and ingenuity, he has saved countless lives. Whole planets - better than three dozen in a single episode, in one case - saved.

It's not just that he's clever, though. Clever only gets him so far. He cares. He wants the universe to work and move, and he wants to see life throughout the whole thing.

See, to the madman in the blue box, life is the most precious thing is real. His archenemies, the Daleks are, quite literally, anti-life and against them every chance he can.

This is the Doctor.

When I was a kid, a very young kid, I didn't really understand what the show was about. I just knew that the Doctor defeated monsters and ran around a lot and, this being the fourth Doctor, that he had a fascinating scarf and floppy hat.

I have no recollection of the exact episode, but I recall the scene. In some grotty cave, a lumpy green man is lurching toward the Doctor. We've seen this thing kill before, although its victim shot at it several times, screaming in terror. The Doctor, though, has no idea what this thing is. He starts, just a little jump back, then smiles that great, toothy grin, reaches into his pocket and holds out a raggedy paper bag.

"Jelly baby?" he asks in a deep, resonating register. The monster stops.

I have no memory of how the scene ends, but that scene has stuck with me ever since.

Monsters are real. They are, any child knows that. But just because something appears monstrous isn't enough to make it a monster. It was this lesson that stuck with me. There were bullies, and they were monstrous, but they weren't monsters. There were people who talked badly about me behind my back, and they were monstrous, but they weren't monsters. They were just people, making bad choices.

Thank you for that lesson, Doctor.

On the 23rd is the 50th anniversary special and, I'll be frank, it's probably a terrible place to start watching if you never have before, but you never know. There will be explosions, and running and times that will make the little child in you feel like hiding behind the couch. And who knows, I might even learn something.

For Christy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovvEb61pLL0

That link right there? It's what we like to call, "ambience." Just open it and let it play in the background.

Anyway, it has come to my attention that it has been far, far too long since the last time I embarrassed you with a public display of affection.

You're amazing. You really, really are.

You fill the gaps in my swing so well and with so little complaint that sometimes it probably seems like I don't notice you doing it. I do, and, as I said, it's amazing.

What throws me, what I can never quite get over, is that you don't love me despite my (many, many) flaws, you love me because of them. You aren't in love with the Jim you wish you'd married, the Jim you want to turn me into or anyone other than the Jim you're married to, a quixotic, slightly crazed Manic Pixie No-So-Dream Man. You're not loud about it, not the way I am about these displays of affection, but that it's quiet makes it all the more powerful.

I'm not putting you on a pedestal here - you frustrate me sometimes, as I'm sure I sometimes frustrate you, but the thing is, even when we're in the middle of a disagreement, my first thought is, "How do I fix this, because I really don't want to fight with my best friend?" But just because we're getting along really well - kind of scarily well - right now is no reason to avoid an opportunity to get to know each other still better.

You and I are going on a date. The sitter will be there at 5:30. For dinner we're going to . . . well, here's where the Manic Pixie thing comes in. It's Choose Your Own Adventure. It's "dinner and . . ." where the "and" depends on the restaurant you choose.

We're going to either The Common Man in Concord, the 99 in Hooksett or Five Guys in Manchester. The "and" is affected by your choice because, well, we have a budget for this, and Common Man is pricier than the 99, which is pricier than Five Guys.

Just let me know by 5:30 where you want me to show up and I'll meet you there.

Love you.

Male Gamers Only

As someone with an XY chromosome and a love of tabletop and video RPGs, ad banners can be embarrassing. A lot of these have cheesecake pinup girls on the ads and are advertised as being "dangerous" or for "male gamers only."

Someone took that idea and put it its head. And it's fantastic.

http://the-toast.net/2013/10/15/male-gamers/