Before I joined the Army I was working at a McDonalds. I hated the job with every cell in my body, despite being extremely good at it, so I was grouchier than I normally was. Most people kept a polite distance, except for one particular nerd, Ezra (name changed to protect the innocent). He was.... not nearly as good at the job as I was, but he had this trait of being friendly to the point of irritation.
That's a very low bar for me, for what it's worth.
He was too damn chipper!
Well, eventually he wore out my grump reflex and we started a friendship, of sorts. Ezra talked a whole hell of a lot about pretty much anything on his mind, at a volume and speed that I could barely keep up with, at a pitch that I definitely didn't want to put up with.... but he was kind. He had a good, gentle heart, under the layers of sheer annoyance. And I find true kindness to be in short supply. So I gritted my teeth and decided a bit of kindness was worth the increase in blood pressure.
Oh, and dear God he talked about his girlfriend too much. Who he swore was real! Promise! She's just far away. I could never remember where.
Starved for roleplaying game time I offered to GM a Burning Wheel for Ezra. I didn't expect much from him, to be honest. I kinda figured he'd futz around with the rule system and probably just make something that would help me pass the time. And, really, at that point, I wanted time to pass. It was still a few months before I would be able to leave, and I knew that what would probably be bad Burning Wheel was still better than no Burning Wheel at all. So I pitched the game to him. I explained that Burning Wheel was not Dungeons and Dragons, that he'd actually have to put work into it to get something out of it, and that I'd help him with the rules but I wasn't going to take it easy on him when the dice hit the table. It was up to Ezra to succeed. He nodded, told me he looked forward to it, and we ended the workshift with me having a twinge of guilt. At the time GMing was a way for me to vent just how frustrated I was, so I looked forward to low-key torturing Ezra's character.
No, I don't mean that ironically.
Yes, that's messed up.
I've never claimed to be a good person. Ever.
Ezra made a character who had a cruel older brother, which mirrored some of his real life situation. That should have been a tip off for me. I admit it now. But I was so pent up, so angry, so arrogant, that I didn't really think much about what would drive Ezra to make such a situation. I just decided to make his brother as cruel as possible and then to give Ezra the chance to abandon him. Which is exactly what I did; I had a dark elf kidnap the brother and gave Ezra the chance to rescue.... under suicidal conditions. Eventually Ezra failed the tests, and the dark elf told his character that it was a nice try, but he could either give up or die with his brother. Ezra walked out of the building. I thought I'd won. And it felt good.
And then Ezra set fire to the entire area, using his Firebuilding skill to set up a conflagration so powerful only he could put it out. When the dark elf came out, furious, Ezra offered to put the fire out.... but only once he had his brother. The dark elf laughed grimly, offered his admiration for a job well done, and brought out Ezra's brother.
The thing that impressed me about this whole scene wasn't Ezra's plan, not principally. It was the look on his face when he had initially failed. There was a determination, a total lack of concern, that took me aback. Ezra's character was going to help his brother and damnit if anyone was going to tell him no. To be able to show kindness and help someone who hated him mattered to this irritating young man. It was unthinkable to Ezra to give up. And, while he normally couldn't do anything so heroic, he had a chance to do it here, in this game. He did it with a grace and ease that I honestly didn't think him capable of. The dark elf's reaction really came out of a genuine place of shocked admiration on my part. Without raising his blood pressure Ezra had shown me what a tool I had been. Kindness and forgiveness are real, no matter how they happen.
The thing is that, otherwise, Ezra was a pretty pathetic person. He had that "feel" of a nerd, of someone who had put all his pudgy existence into playing video games and anime and nothing else. His room was lined with differing paraphernalia he'd definitely spent some good money to acquire. With the exception of his girlfriend (who I never saw of a picture of) there really wasn't much talked about other than video games and anime. If there was a drive that Ezra had beyond these things, he didn't show it to me except that one time, in Burning Wheel.
My last memory of him was being shown Halo 4. Which I hated. It felt like CoD. But Ezra was so excited that there was a new Halo I didn't really have the heart to tell him how much I despised the thing he had specifically brought me over to show off. He also showed me that you could now watch anime while you played video games on the XBox, something that I hated even more. But again, he was so excited that a part of me knew it would be wrong of me to shut him down. After a few matches he asked if I wanted to watch Pacific Rim. Considering that's one of my favorite movies...
Eventually it was late and I had to go, having work the next day. Ezra walked me to the door, talking excitedly about the resolution on the TV. And it was nice, to be fair! I'd not seen Pacific Rim look that good since seeing it in IMAX. So I was more than happy to reciprocate. But I realized something really sad in that conversation: Ezra didn't know how to look for anything else. Not anymore. The world was a meaningless wasteland for him, and these few hours he could get with his videogames and his TV was as good as he could see it getting. Ezra wished me luck at MEPS and talked about joining the military himself, probably the Coast Guard. I told him that I'd heard the Coast Guard were all genuine badasses and I'd be impressed at anyone making it through their training. And he'd actually be useful, unlike me, who was going into the Army. Ezra laughed and said something kind and dorky. I forget what it was, only that I honestly felt reassured by him in that moment. I didn't feel too reassured by anybody at that point in my life; the feeling was like water to a man stuck in a desert.
I never saw him again.
I hope Ezra made it out. I hope he figured out how to not be addicted to the machines that sidelined him into a life of insignificance. I hope he went and joined the Coast Guard. I really hope things worked out with that girlfriend, or if not with her that some lady would figure out that Ezra was a genuinely kind soul. But the bitter and mean part of me wonders (with a sneer!) if he's not sitting in that same room, even eight years later, still raving about the latest garbage video game and anime. There's only one direction to the universe, after all, and it's down.
But who knows? 19 years ago I said I didn't want anyone to remember me. I wanted to be dead and forgotten. With a wife and three children that's changing, one step at a time. I'm able to change. Maybe he did too! Hopefully we'll both make it. Kindness should.
Although that doesn’t change the fact that Halo 4 sucked ass.
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