Adventure

Compared to the last couple of days, I was unusually productive today.  I left the house.

I needed to get a memory card for our Gamecube, because I had been suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to play Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, but I didn’t see the point if none of my progress would be saved.  I know myself; I burn out easily.  Therefore odds were that I would make it through a total of four stages, get bored, but then want to pick it up again a few hours later.  At which point I would have to start over, which would suck.  And I couldn’t find the memory card – which I knew we owned – anywhere. 

The urge persisted. 

I showered, taking the opportunity to sing “Bad Romance” in an over-the-top sultry voice because no one could hear me, then put on actual pants, and drove to GameStop, where the very nice guy behind the counter sold me a used card for $15. 

Yikes.  Just realized I have less than $100 in my bank account and I just got my paycheck Friday.  No good.

Anyway, I was ridiculously proud of myself for accomplishing this.  I have this thing, I think it’s a byproduct of depression, where activities that people with normal chemistry would find easy seem impossibly difficult to me.  On my good days, it’s just things that require a lot of organization, and I can push myself to do it.  On bad days, brushing my teeth is too complicated and tiring.  But I managed to both make myself presentable and interact with another human being, so today is a good one.

As I was driving home, congratulating myself for running a small errand, my thoughts naturally turned to the game I had such a powerful desire to play and then video games in general.

The fact is, I’m not good at video games.  I wish I was.  Sonic Adventure 2: Battle happens to be one of the easiest games on the planet – I’m serious, you don’t even have to aim half the time – so I can play that without too much frustration.  Otherwise my options are limited to Tetris and Pokemon.  I got that Super Mario Bros. game for the Wii the other day, and I die about ten times on every.  Single.  Level.  My brother sits and watches me, his disdain vying with his disbelief for the position of most overpowering emotion.

Brother: Don’t you know you need to jump over that gap by now?  When you fall, you die.  When you die, you have to start over.

Me:  I KNOW THAT.  *fails to jump, dies*

Brother:  Apparently you don’t.

Me: Don’t you have finals to study for?  Something?  *runs into a Goomba*  SON OF A BITCH.

Brother: I literally don’t think anyone has ever been worse at a game.

Mario, on screen: *begins to weep*

You get the idea.  I once made a valiant effort to play Halo.  That didn’t end well either, even when I was playing at the easiest level – you know, where the aliens actually flee before you and your massive array of guns?  Yeah.

It’s too bad.  I’ve always kind of wanted to be a gamer, regardless of the stigma.  I’d like to be good enough to get on Xbox Live or whatever and play with other people without making them a) piss their pants with derisive laughter, b) get homicidally angry at me because of my incompetence, or c) both.

I’m also afraid that they’d assume I suck because I’m a girl, which would make me furious and would be an insult to competent female gamers everywhere.

I read somewhere that around 2/3 of online gamers are girls, but they either stick to their own games or choose male avatars – not many are up front about their gender right away.  My only exposure to admitted female gamers makes me wonder if there’s another reason besides discrimination that makes these women hide.  That would be the insufferability of the ones who comment sections on various threads, in which they talk in very knowledgeable detail about a game and then, at the end, say something like, “By the way, I have [some female sexual organ].  Did I just blow your mind?”

This has always bothered me, for a couple reasons.  One of which is that, while my mind wasn’t blown, I realize that I do in fact just casually assume that most people online are male unless otherwise specified.  Not in a “no girls allowed” sense – obviously, I’m a girl – it’s just a generalization.  Like when people use “he” to refer to a hypothetical person.  It’s aggravating to see this in myself.

The other is the air of smugness.  I have a friend who once said in a class that if she were a character in a Western, she’d be the one that everybody thought was a guy until she whipped off her hat – probably in slow motion – and let her blatantly feminine locks tumble gloriously around her head while onlookers gaped in shock and awe.

See, that’s funny when she says it, because she’s a humble person, and also because she could legitimately kick ass if she wanted to.  The attitude is less amusing when I envision a stranger revealing her true gender with an overly-dramatic flourish and expecting the male gaming population to fall down at her feet, just because she’s a woman and can wield a gun made out of pixels.  That’s not so much removing a hat as ripping open your shirt and thrusting your boobs at the world.  By which I mean, not classy.

I’m going to be honest, all of this seemed wittier when I was talking at myself in my car.  Now I’ve been going on for ages and I don’t know how to transition away from the sudden rant and end this.

I did go home and play my pathetically easy game.  I also got tired of it after about four stages, but the $15 are now worth it because I’m about to go pick up where I left off, suckaaas.

I Could Never Be A Mother

It happened again.  The one woman with a small child sat next to me in Starbucks.

I don't know how they do it.  It's like the cat phenomenon - the fact that a cat will always go for the one person in the room who's allergic or just doesn't like cats.

And I dislike children.  I don't even like the word children - it sounds prissy.  Yet harassed mothers with their snot-ridden spawn in tow are drawn to me as if I exert some kind of twisted gravitational pull.  They'll sit down at the nearest table and the child will invariably stare at me, dribbling on itself, while I try to ignore the fact that it's clearly trying to devour my soul with its blank, watery eyes.

Sometimes, like today, the mother will look at this horrific tableau and think, "Oh, my offspring likes this cringing, uncomfortable-looking person!  Maybe she'll watch little What's-It's-Face while I go to the bathroom for two seconds of peace."

Because I have this crippling  compulsion to be nice to people, I agreed to keep an eye on the little death machine for a few minutes.

It was an excruciating two minutes and forty-nine seconds.

It chewed on a napkin and continued gazing relentlessly at me.  I kept edging away in little increments, trying to look at it only peripherally in case meeting its eyes proved fatal.  Sometimes it made guttural sounds, which I imagine were part of some kind of infant witchcraft.  The napkin darkened steadily as it absorbed the kid's no doubt venomous secretions.  A damp, evil smell emanated from its direction.  I held my breath.

At one minute and twelve seconds, the sodden napkin slipped from between its pulpy lips.  Its eyes widened, displeased.

Oh SHIT, I thought, and in a panic thrust the cardboard sleeve around my cup into its gaping mouth.  It accepted my desperate offering, gnawing on the cardboard like an ancient god on the bones of a human sacrifice.  Its teeth were little nubs, ghastly to behold.  Without the napkin shielding its chin, I could see that the skin there was slick with saliva, red, and chapped.  I repressed a shudder.

In all this time, it never averted its intent stare.  I strained my ears for the sound of a toilet flushing, hoping to God there wasn't a window in the bathroom the mother might have crawled out of.

When she did emerge to the strains of the "Hallelujah" chorus, I tried to act as though I was smiling out of pleasure at the drooling antics of the child and not out of sheer, overwhelming relief.  The hapless woman thanked me, grimly hoisted her dead-eyed burden into her arms, and as she left (and it was still staring at me over her shoulder), I internally patted my pockets, checking to make sure all of my soul was still there.

(Yes, I keep my soul in my existential pockets.  What do you use, a wallet?  Bah.)

Fuel

I hate going to the gas station.  This is a fact.

While I realize that I have to feed my car periodically in return for it carrying me places, much like I occasionally pick up food for my mom because she hauled me around like a massive, internal parasite for nine months, getting gas is an ordeal.  As such, I put it off as long as possible. 

(This sometimes causes problems, like the time I avoided it for so long that my car ran out of gas exactly as I rolled into my garage - which, precision aside, was a hassle the next morning.)

Getting gas is mainly an inconvenience.  Not only do I have to factor in the five to ten minutes it'll take into my trip, it interrupts a perfectly good ride.  I don't know about you, but I tend to space out majorly when I drive, sometimes getting so into my thoughts that I talk to myself and make ridiculous faces that have probably caused more than one motorist to swerve when they inadvertently caught sight of me mid-grimace in their rear-view mirror.  The necessity of pulling into a gas station and standing by a pump derails these trains of thought entirely, which I hate.

And my debit card is always rejected.  Always.  So instead of filling my tank in anonymity, I have to trudge into the little Quik-E-Mart or whatever so the suicidally-bored attendant can perform the complex task of swiping my card for me.  They usually give me this reproachful look, like I had the pump outside reject my card on purpose in order to orchestrate this pointless interaction.

Then I have to go back outside and watch the two rows of numbers go up, which is ridiculously stressful.  I keep rooting for the bottom row, even though I know the top row will always win, so I just set myself up for disappointment each and every time.  And I can't just sit in my car and ignore the numbers because I'm irrationally convinced that if I'm not staring unblinkingly at the screen, the machine won't work.  The closer the cost climbs to $25, the more anxious I get.  And when it actually goes past $25 -

"Hey.  HEY.  STOP THAT.  WHAT THE FUCK."

- I get agitated.  I spent $28.54 on gas this morning, and I might as well have eaten a triple cheeseburger for all the good it did for my blood pressure.

Plus, no matter how long I wait after the gas stops flowing, or how vigorously I shake the nozzle, there's always that little bit of gas - which I believe I paid for - that drips on the ground.  It's infuriating.

The only redeeming part of the whole experience is starting my car again and seeing the fuel gauge back at "full."  I get a strange, almost primal satisfaction out of that, and sometimes it can make up for all the hassle.

Just don't drive away with the pump still in your car.  That never ends well.