"It was the Kind of Kiss that made me know I was Never so Happy in My Whole Life."

I long for the old Saturday night Halo parties at Jeff’s. It made seeing everyone so much easier. There’s hardly anything worse than feeling like you have to see people out of a sense of obligation. On those nights, everyone fought for a seat, got loaded on either Mountain Dew or beer and played for a few hours. Later, Jeff got a girlfriend, got transferred out of the store, a guy started working at Food Lion who threw “real” parties and as for myself, I just really got tired of playing Halo period.

While I do not miss Halo at all, I miss being around my friends like that. It is so hard for me to balance my life in such a way to where it isn’t always about games. What I mean by that is life always comes before games. This is something I learned when I transferred to a different Food Lion to once again work with Jeff. Where as before, when me and Jeff worked together, all we talked about was games, when we were working together most recently more important things needed talking about.

Jeff has his own issues and it isn’t my place to talk about them. Except he felt it was my place to hear about them, which was nice, because it reminded me of why I enjoy the man’s company in the first place. For me, it was the way I felt the old Food Lion was destroying my life. And how I am going back to school to do something that while I am not too good at, I love to do. And how lonely I get some nights when old friends neglect to answer instant messages and I play games not out of the love I have for them, but out of the boredom of not having anything else to do.

And one particular night at this store, we sat outside fifteen minutes before we were going to close it down. A very nice girl who worked there drove up with a new dog she had received as a college graduation present and sat down beside us. Jeff told her the story about how we one time tied the doors of the old meat department together so when the manager would try to kick them the next day as he always did, the doors would fly back and smack him in the face. The plan worked. He followed the story up with, “I have known this guy here for a very long time, and I am really happy we are working together again.” And I had the realization I was alive, and stories like these hold me back to the past while at the exact same time propelling me head first into a new life.

It was the same way last Wednesday night when I went to a bar/club with a couple friends. I wasn’t going to go, but then I thought about how I could use it in some way in the story I am writing for a game. I didn’t have a good time. Not because of the reasons others would accuse me of, that I am unsocial and nervous, and need to get over my own self imposed ideas of how not cool I am. The truth is, it just wasn’t fun. I told my friends I wanted to leave because I came to the idea of driving way into Bristol to see an old friend of mine. It was about two in the morning when I started my thirty-five minute drive, and I was extremely disappointed when he wasn’t home. But if the guy isn’t home after three in the morning it means at some other time late at night I can go see him and he might not be asleep.

One night I am not going to feel like playing games and will want to sit with someone and reminisce about a past that defines me. I have that opportunity. And I am thankful.

I felt compelled last Thursday to drive up Barnes and Noble to buy the new issue of Edge magazine. The reason I use the word compelled is because of the spontaneous way I got ready and left. I was entirely happy sitting in my room playing Final Fantasy X, but the thought of reading a new Edge seemed great. I put the new White Stripes cd (which I adore) in the player and drove up to the bookstore. When I walked in, I caught a glimpse of the woman who was going to be ringing me up and froze in place. My first real entry here talked about a girl who worked at a game store. I have a shelf of games I bought that I will never play because of this girl. One could reasonably assume I would now have a shelf full of book I would never read because the girl that stopped me in my tracks happened to be the same shy, pale skinned girl with wire framed glasses that at one time worked at a certain Game Stop.

I make one trip to Barnes and Noble a month, to pick up Edge, a smartly written magazine about videogames. The next time I walk into the store will be a month from last Thursday because when she ringed me up I spotted a wedding band on her ring finger. And Saturday, when I said goodbye to relatives from Virginia, it really hit me how my stupid crushes mean so much to me. I walked away, got into my car and started crying, not because of this girl, or this other girl or any girl in particular. But because of myself, and how I am the boy who has crushes on simple girls, and I am the boy who cries when the guy gets the girl at the end of the movie. And although it makes me destined to be by myself, at least for the time being and the foreseeable future, I love that I am the boy who cries at the end of the movie.

And driving home Saturday, listening to the new White Stripes cd I immediately started thinking of how I could turn the feelings and emotions I was feeling into a piece about videogames so I can post it on the site. But there is no way to do that except to mention that games are my preferred hobby in my life. And I plan on one day making a career out of writing about games in a way that is entirely my own. And these small life epiphanies I have make my life more full. And while games probably don’t factor too much into these things I write, they do act as the backbone and the “setting” in which I structure what I write. And by no means is this good writing in any form, but it is honest. And honesty goes a long way.

wes