31/05/2002 - 9:21 p.m.

God Save the Queen

Here I am, sitting in my back room in front of my computer, wearing a Burger King crown and breathing great sighs of releif that I am not the Queen of Dorkdom. Why? Because this afternoon I saw Dorkdom, and I am not it's queen. Many times I have been thus professed, but no; I would have to work to become the Queen of Dorkdom.

A guy in my brother's BS troop had his graduation party today, and I was forced to go. I don't know him, he doesn't know me, it would be weird- no excuse apparently. Something I was unaware of- he's a gamer. A gamer in a big way.

I admit having been oblivious to just what gaming was other than a weird thing Margot spends up to ten hours doing on Saturday nights. I had thus far never experienced gamers or their games.

Upon entering the room, it was very obvious the grown ups had one side of the room and kids the other. I sat over with the rest of the kids because the grown ups obviously didn't know or want me.

The kids are all high schoolers (except for a twenty year old who appears to be a cousin), and all are equipped with a 32 ounce Mountain Dew. Unto this mighty beveridge they have made a shrine of empty bottles (I kid you not). Every now and then someone cracks a joke as to the stimulating powers of the stuff and everyone laughs. Except me, because how many humourous variations of "I like Mountain Dew because it's got caffienne in it" can there be? (zero)

So they're playing some game and the twenty year old is consulting the rules book, which is somewhat reminiscent of my Complete Shakespeare, and telling everyone just what to do: "you should move here", "Oh, roll the dice seven times" all of which seems obvious to me and I didn't have to read the book. It was played like some sort of life or death mission- based entirely on chance. There's no strategy involved, you only had to be smart enough to be able to read the book and remember a quarter of the rules. These kids were seriously into it though. I asked them how long the game could go on- four hours, at least the way things stood at that point. But, if it got tough, maybe six or seven.

I'd rather play a good game of chess.

On top of that, Mystic will be back at camp, according to Beanie. The choice of "Mystic" for a camp name is a malapropism in a big way. The name would seem to project someone cool, smart, atistic and intelligent. With our Mystic though, the lights aren't on and nobody's home. Actually, they've been gone for a long time and they're not coming back- ever. She reminds me of Ralph Wiggum, from The Simpson's, except that she's 17.

Nope, I am not the Queen of Dorkdom. I wear my Burger King crown with the pride that I could easily be queen of anything else. (The universe?)