Growing Up Happens

Don't let anyone fool you: you don't magically become an adult at 18.  Anyone who's 19 understands that, anyone who's 24 laughs at that, and anyone who's 17 distinctly hopes it's not true.  But if you're 18 around a bunch of 21 year-olds, you feel the same as you did at 15.  And when you're a 21 year old on just any normal day, it feels an awful lot similar to 20, which in turn always feels like 19, but with added amounts of confusion.

Your friends will be getting married while your other friends talk about how ridiculous it is to get married at this age and while other friends talk about never wanting to get married at all.  In fact, you'll probably never heard a friend of yours say, “I want to get married” when they weren't already engaged.  And then these people who previously never mentioned marriage all of a sudden come back from a vacation saying they proposed and the other said yes and they're either setting a date or just going to wait until graduation but they'll still be engaged.

And these things won't make sense because you don't really want to think about the fact that you're an adult, because you never felt like an adult and nobody ever walked up to you on your 18th birthday and handed you your Adult League Membership Card. Maybe you expected it would come with confirmation of your Selective Service registry.  Be glad it didn't.

But if and when it does happen that you find yourself to be considered an adult in the eyes of the law, the change is subtle.  Of course you'll start getting credit card offers and bills and things that are responsibilities and all.  But those won't feel like tickets into adulthood.  Those will feel like things they threw at you when you weren't looking and they expect you to deal with them even though you're still pretty sure you've only been alive a little more than a decade.

No, the clues to adulthood are different.  Like meeting friends to hang out and ending up talking rather than seeing a movie or playing video games.  Not that you'll stop seeing movies or playing video games – adult life without movies or games is no life at all.  But you'll realize that the people you know are suddenly so much more interesting than they used to be.  They'll have things to say.  They'll listen to things you'll have to say.  You'll stop just talking at people and start conversing with people.

And you'll love it, hopefully.  You'll find that people are, as a whole, so much more interesting and so much less of a waste than you thought they were when you were a kid.  You'll stop saying that everyone sucks and start noticing that there are some people that genuinely interest you.  And you'll find out that you can surround yourself with these people.  Yes, you can be around people you want to be around.  And anyone over 30 will tell you this isn't news and that that's not really a revelation, but you'll know that it's groundbreaking, and it was probably groundbreaking for them when they first figured it out.

That's not to say you'll like everybody.  There will always be jerks.  That's not to say everybody will be interesting.  There will always be genuine bores.  But you'll find that most people generally are less awful than you assumed they were as a teenager.  And those people will realize it too.  And this won't be accompanied by bells on the hill or a five piece jazz combo playing Come Fly With Me, but it will be no less important.  You'll figure it out in the middle of a five-hour-long conversation that should have ended two hours ago because you are all so unbelievably tired but you won't stop talking because this whole discussion thing is just way too much fun to stop.

Maybe.  I hope.  Because if I just spent the past 600 words completely generalizing a reaction that you'll never have, I'll look like an idiot.  But I honestly do hope this is what happens, because the moment that you realize that being an adult is actually really cool is a spectacular moment.  And someone like you deserves that feeling.

A Valuable Lesson - based on a true false story

“When I was a little boy,” my gravel-throated, slasher-grinning English teacher began one class – another seemingly endless fifty-two minutes regarding a lesser-known work by Cormac McCarthy – in his trademark tone somewhere between Jack Torrance and The Joker, “I used to have seizures.”

An uneasy silence fell upon the room like an upturned pot of chili: in tremendous, unsettling drips.

“I had seizures all the time,” he continued menacingly, none of us having the faintest clue where he was going with this.  “The kids were really mean to me.  They used to call me seizure boy.”

It's not that this had never happened before, because it had.  He would tell stories like this all the time.  About Stewie, his frog, who wouldn't come out from under the rock in his tank to look at him anymore, and how that made him unreasonably sad.  About the years back when the school would burned its garbage and how he would put starter blanks in trash bins so that when the janitor ran the incinerator, they would go off and he would think someone was shooting at him.  About his wife or his colleagues or his cross country team, really about anything.  Whether or not we liked it, we were very familiar with the man's tangents.  The problem was that we just never knew what they would be, how insane they would get, or if they even had a point relevant to class.

“And the doctor told my parents that unless the seizures would stop, I would die.”

I suppressed a shudder as the story went on in that voice that would make the Black Tongue of Mordor sound like a concert aria in comparison.

“This of course was bad news, but the doctor said he had a solution,” he said, getting to what we assumed, or at least hoped, would be the crux of the story.  “He said that there was a pill I could take.  And it would stop my seizures and save my life.  But there was a problem.”

Ah, now this must be the point.  A story about a choice where neither option presents a victory.  This would be a perfect way to discuss the unfortunate choices that John Grady, our book's code hero, would have to make.  A few of us straightened up, sensing the importance of what was to come.

“If I took the pill,” he said, looking us dead in the eyes, “it could have the side effect of rotting the bones in my jaw off.”

Macabre? Of course it was.  But anyone would come to expect that sort of thing from a teacher who decorated his desk with a replica of the possessed doll from Child's Play.  We knew that wasn't the point of the story.

“So I could either lose my jaw, or I could die.  Obviously, I didn't want to die.  But I was a teenager.  I wanted to suck face.”

By this point, another teacher appeared in the door, listening, not speaking, and carrying a sizable roll of CAUTION-printed Police line.

“So I didn't take the pill.”

We waited.

“And I died.”

There wasn't a sound in the room.  None of us knew what to think, much less what to say.  We wondered if we should have seen that ending coming.

“Hey Dom,” he said, looking up as the other teacher laughed and started adhering the caution tape to the door frame for unknown reasons.  “You'll never guess what I got these kids to believe.”

A small review of Bastion

Recently I came upon a rather impressive surprise in the form of a video game named Bastion.  It's a game I probably would never have discovered on my own: I became aware of it with the release of the most recent Humble Indie Bundle, a special offer name-your-own-price bundle of independently developed video games that is offered every now and then and is absolutely worth keeping an eye on.  I myself knew nothing about Bastion, but I had heard from a handful of blogs that it had a killer soundtrack and deserved paying attention to.  So when I bought the Humble Bundle, I decided to start with that game.

It of course had a lot of what I expected from the hype.  It had fantastic music, striking art, and a great deal of fun gameplay.  But in spite of it all, not everything I had come to expect would prove good.  I had assumed that it would be one of those games that was just too cool for its own good, too wrapped up in being impressive to actually deliver on anything substantial.

It's an easy assumption to make, because if one thing drives this game, it clearly is the concept of cool.  A soundtrack made from a damn good blend of blues, folk, electronic, post rock, country, sitar and atmospheric accompaniment.  A sole narrator describing your every movement with a voice like a blend of Keith David, Morgan Freeman and Barry White all sitting around a campfire, passing around a fifth of bourbon and trading tales of the Wild West.  A setting filled with an unexplained blend of fantasy, science fiction and steampunk elements.  Weapons like an automatic crossbow made out of a small reptile skeleton, a machete that can be thrown and split into three blades, and a bellows that spits flames.  A setting consisting of ground that flies up to meet your feet rather than staying in place.  It's easy to think that with this sort of disregard for logic in the face of greater awesomeness that things like story and character would take a back seat for smashing up “Gasfellas” and “Anklegators” with a hammer the size of the protagonist.  Which is why it came as a great surprise to me when the ending had me almost in tears.

The whole game has a shocking subtlety to it, and it develops the characters actually fairly well that they become worth saving, the efforts you put into building the eponymous Bastion seem hugely important, and your actions all feel like they have consequences.  For example, throughout most of the game, you're beating up outlandish creatures and plants that have it in for you and disappear as soon as they're defeated, like enemies do in most games.  But then, as you start to realize that the creatures have similar goals to you, the game hits you with a curve ball.  Without spoiling too much, the game eventually puts you against other humans.  And unlike the Windbags and Peckers and Pincushions that you battle most of the game, the humans don't disappear when they're killed.  It's subtle.  It's never mentioned.  It's possible to miss it completely.  But when you deliver a final blow on someone who's attacking you, and instead of flashing red and vanishing, they just fall to the ground dead, the gravity of what you've done hits you like a meteor hammer.   But you don't get to stay and contemplate it right away, because the next attacker is coming for you.

This game could have so easily been an excuse to destroy exotic enemies and customize ridiculous weapons like in Borderlands or the early stages of some Final Fantasy games.  But somehow, Bastion makes an enormous impression.  A phenomenal soundtrack, incredible voice acting, a unique visual style, and challenging and enjoyable gameplay all make this a game worth playing.  But its careful use of storytelling and consequence of action make this a game worth talking about.  And that, more than anything else, is what we need right now.