perfidy

Voting on Round 2 is now closed: GeekLethal wins with his saga of shame and teenaged diaper-rash. Round 3 between Johno and Geeklethal is now open for voting and mockery. See also Round 1.

To stay in this fight, I need to take round 2. I wasn’t prepared for Johno’s freight-train dork attack last time, and it cost me the round. This time, I’m going to have to unload my reserve, the reserve I was saving to take me through later bouts: my 11 lightning jabs of school dork. Sound effects of my crushing blows added for atmosphere:

-I was always the fat kid (thwock)

-Had glasses since I’m 8 (pow)

-When my mother would throw me out on nice days, to be where she felt normal boys should be, I would take a book and read outside somewhere until I felt I’d been in the sun long enough (whack-whack); best one I read in this manner was “Elfstones of Shannara” (ZONK)

-Failed gym on more than one occasion; faked maladies to avoid gym more times than I can remember (pif-pif)

-7th grade swimming: was so embarrassed to be naked in locker room, would put my pants on over my wet shorts afterward and wear the rest of the day; borderline diaper rash; mile-walk home during winter and pants would freeze (thwack-thwack-CRACK)

-8th grade lunch/recess: Was genuinely sad that I couldn’t break-dance like my friends; tried it at home in kitchen and only managed to hurt myself (bam-SOCK); also, crushed that I couldn’t find parachute pants for fat kids (toff)

-Freshman year, high school: went to get something from my locker during class and was mugged in hall, but asked that they leave me enough money for lunch (splort-BANG)
-Sophomore year: Girl on school bus almost kicked my ass, but she left me alone after I spit my lollipop at her (CRUNCH-ZAM)

-1986-89: Played wargames by myself because no one I knew would play them right; in essence spent days playing with myself (smack)

- Owned, enjoyed, and utilized Star Wars and GI Joe figures until I was about 13; Looked forward to building them new forts and vehicles out of legos, Contrux, Lincoln Logs, et al; flunked honors Spanish because I was sketching said structures (ZAM-ZOCKO-ZONG)

-By the time I was 12, had escape routes and (admittedly rough) ambush plans to arm myself in the event of Soviet conquest (KERPOW)

Johno, if you can take this kind of beating and survive, I have grossly underestimated your dorktitude.

[wik] You Forget My Secret Weapon: The Screaming Fist of Humilating Prolixity!

It is time now for me to counter GeekLethal's attack with one of my own.

Does anybody else get the feeling that this contest is like a terrible bonfire of the vanities? Or a potlach of cool? In order to prove our status we are making a towering inferno of our cool. Biggest fire wins!

Now, by starting out with yet another story about gaming in a foreign country, you might think I’m going to ground, hunkering down under the flurry of butterfly punches sent my way by Mr. GeekLethal. Indeed, the idea of him sitting half a school day in squelchy trousers and then walking home crying in the snow while his pants freeze is a dork story of unmeasurable grace and pathos.
However, I can't resist sharing this vignette of dorkiness abroad before offering my own list of dork issues in order to underscore just how g-d d-mn dorky I is. Was. Was. One might argue that yet another gaming abroad story is repeating myself. I would argue that instead, it's proof that I fail to learn from my own mistakes.

The year: 1991. The place: the plateaus of Central Mexico, in a rural area in central Guanajuato. I had gone to Mexico as part of an organization called Amigos de las Americas, a wonderful group whose mission is to send American volunteers to Latin American nations for 4- 6- or 8-week stints of latrine building, human and canine vaccination, school building, dental hygiene, Oral Rehydration Therapy packet distribution coupled with basic hygiene, and other projects. I was there building latrines, planting fruit trees, handing out ORT packets, and doing in-home dental hygiene lessons for children.

One rule of Amigos de las Americas is that once in country, volunteers may not leave the town to which they are assigned. This is to cut down on various risks, as our only supervision was a route leader who came around once a week or so to check up on me and my partner.

For a sixteen-year-old kid from Ohio who had never been further from home than Cleveland (twice), the countryside of Central Mexico was to put it mildly a bit of a shock. I was stationed in a town of some fourteen houses and fewer families, all so poor that they took turns feeding us our diet of beans, rice, and eggs. The electricity that had been wired in just a year before worked intermittently, allowing us to watch Knight Rider (“El Auto Increíble”) and the cartoon version of “Dungeons and Dragons” dubbed into Spanish.

The profound sense of dislocation that resulted was my first encounter with adult choices- doing things you don’t want to do, coping with unfamiliar and daunting situations with no recourse or help available. The people of the village were extremely friendly, but of course the cultural barriers were high and therefore little solace could be found.

So I did what came naturally. To pass the time and to provide a sense of home, I drew up a splendid map, made up character sheets, tore off and numbered small pieces of paper 1 to 20, and taught my route partner to play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That we had no rulebooks was not a problem- I had all of that in my head. The armor class of a goblin. The THAC0 of a second-level cleric. The damage dice for a longsword. The attributes and characteristics of The Iron Bands of Billaro,” all ready at hand.

By the end of our eight weeks, I had a fantastically detailed world at hand peopled with nations complete with histories, catastrophies, and mythologies. Yeah sure, we got all our latrines built, taught all the kids how to brush their teeth with a twig, maybe saved a child or two from eventually dying of dysentery, dodged subtle offers of daughter-marriage and more. But a few years ago while packing my stuff up after college, I didn’t find any photos from Mexico. I think my parents had them somewhere. I didn’t find an effaced one-peso piece that at the time was worth 1/3300th of a dollar. I found the one memento from Mexico that had stayed with me for years-- the campaign map that I had labored over while the rainy season came and the valleys of Mexico turned green.

Now, let’s get to it.

• I was never quite the fat kid, but in my third grade open soccer league, they invented the position of referee just for me.
• I too had glasses when I was 8. Big deal.
• There was a cabal of bullies in my small school and I was their favorite thin-skinned target. I have been in probably a hundred fights or more, and lost every single one.
• Two words: Space Camp. I’m saving the rest of my Space Camp story for later rounds if I make it.
• Wore the same blue Space Camp hooded sweatshirt to school every day for a year.
• The next year, aware if the wardrobe gaffe embodied in the sweatshirt, I bought ten IZOD polo shirts in different colors and wore them every day of that year.
• GI Joe and Transformers mania lasted for me as well. Used to stage elaborate war games with one friend in his family’s living room, until about age 13. I have to admit, though, I never sketched structures. Instead I covered every notebook through high school with sketches of firearms. Today, this would get me expelled and arrested.
• In seventh grade was kicked out of Advanced English quiet reading time for continuously laughing out loud at the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dug hole deeper by attempting to explain to class and teacher why it was funny.
• In seventh grade got into a geek-fight with another kid. He gave me floppy discs that self-erased when put in my computer. I returned the favor in the band room before concert band by giving him back all the software I’d borrowed from him, first making sure I was in sight of everyone, and then crumpling the 5 1/4 inch floppies into a ball. It was very important to me that everyone see me take righteous geek vengeance.
• I spent Sunday afternoons during middle and high school in my room, running solo campaigns of AD&D.
• I spent Friday nights—nearly every Friday night—during middle and high school roleplaying. I mastered the rules for D&D, AD&D, various GURPS systems, Warhammer, Paranoia!, The (ultra-lame) Marvel Comics Superhero system, and a short dozen other gaming systems.
• I never failed gym- it was impossible to fail gym when Crazy Ray Murray already set the bar so low- but I did manage to get through exactly one pushup in our eighth grade fitness test.
• Marching band, four years.
• In 11th grade, helped found a student group, SAFE (Students Acting for the Environment) and participated in a special before-school assembly in which SAFE members performed a pantomime with ecologically-themed props while dressed all in green before giving a speech on the planet’s pain.
• (FINISH HIM!!!) One last vignette, presented out of chronological order. When I was a kid I wanted to play Little League. After tryouts I ended up being placed on and playing four years as the oldest kid on a team of kids a grade behind me many of whom were that year's crop of dorks. Even among dorks a year younger and therefore smaller and less developed than myself, I once rode the bench for every inning of twelve straight games. My specialty was taking my glove off while in right field and zoning out. I spent a lot of time teaching myself to break dance by doing the moves and watching my shadow on the ground in front of me, in full sight of my team, the other team, and all the coaches and parents.

And perhaps the piece de resistance…

• I wore my hair in a mullet until I was a sophomore in college.