The pods

One of the hobbies I've picked up along the way was Battletech.

I don't play the tabletop.  Hell, I don't even play the PC game.  None of those stupid copy cats like Mech Assault and stuff.  Grand Ole Battletech in Pods.

When my husband and I were first together, living on our own, we both worked in the mall, Memorial City Mall to be specific.  I worked at a place that's still around called Spencer's Gifts and my husband worked at Exhilarama, which was the old arcade place.  You can totally laugh about that.  We were married teenagers, working in the mall.  He was part of the distinctive team that worked in what looked like a small military-styled bunker, covered in camo.  He wore a (sexy) black jumpsuit, combat boots, and played on a computer all day - pushing both geeky kids and adults alike into giant black boxes, shutting a door, and immersing them in a VR setting of a pilot console controlling giant robots to blow each other (and sometimes themselves) up in pretty spectacular ways.  At this time, this was the cutting edge of VR gaming, with a whole slew of stars casting in the 'training videos', from Cheech Marin to Judge Rhinehold, and several other stars that were popular at the time.  

Fast-forward somewhere like 25 years later.

My husband finds this group in Houston called MechCorps.  I don't really pay much attention at first, but then I get to the point where, well, our kids are growing up fast, and I want to have other commonalities with my husband - things we can do together.  We've spend most of our lives together raising kids, so focused on it, that we have rarely had time to ourselves.  Before we know it, we'll only have one another, so ....kind of only good to have common interests, right?  

Firstly, I'm not a sci-fi person at all.  Really. I think that might have to to with the technobabble which comes along with it.  Some people really dig that kind of thing, and speculate on how to create it for reals (think about this...remember when Star Trek the next generation debuted?  They walked around...doing their work on hand-held tablets....now we have a whole generation of zombies...doing work and games...on handheld tablets...).  I was more engrossed by stories than anything else.  So beating around that bush, the idea was that I went because I wanted to spend time with my husband, I really didn't give too much of a shit about the game itself.

Um, truth be told, really....I still don't.  I can't tell you the difference between the Madcat and Timberwolf (aren't they the same mech?  Depending on what side of the alliance you're on, right?  Freeborn or canned, I can't remember which).  Or how many chassis the game offers (but I think there's 172 variants?).  Hell, I can't even remember how to unjam the guns and missiles when you're sitting in the cockpit.

But I still went with him, and I found something even more cool than the game itself.

I found the people that run it.

This game runs about every Saturday night from 6 pm to midnight.  They generally announce when they're open and when they're not in town, but that's part of the fun of being in the MechCorps crew.  We were there a lot.  We learned about the way the system was set up (probably more the husband than me, I learned more of the gruntwork of moving and setting up), and the nights that MechCorps was closed, generally, it was because either they couldn't find someone to run the game or they were out of town for the conventions they go to.

Yeah.....these guys tour.  Like damn rockstars.....

So in hanging out with these people, learning about them, getting to know them and how awesome they are, we volunteered to help out with conventions.  They gave us 'easy ones' first, and then we started hitting the road locally with them.  It's kind of cool, because really, they need the help.  You volunteer.  Which means you help pack everything up, you catch a ride, you set everything up.  You work a 'shift' daily during convention and then you get the rest of the time to yourself.  They even put you up in a hotel (but be forewarned, they cram 6 people to a hotel room sometimes - you're there to work so it's barracks style sleep.  You share a bed or you bring an air mattress).  So...it's like getting to go to a convention free.

But the kicker is this: you gotta be a cool person.  You gotta be dependable.  And they gotta like you.

I think we were fortunate enough that even though my husband and I have personalities that are almost like night and day, they kind of found us interesting and dependable.

I know this sounds like a shameless plug for MechCorps.  It kinda is.  They're kinda wonderful people.

high functioning anxiety

When we moved from Houston, we left the older one behind (it breaks my heart still...I feel like I abandoned her...) and the younger one came with us.  Now it's like she's an only child and she happily saps whatever I have to spoil her with to her heart's content.  Of the two, she seemed quite a bit more fearless and intrepid, with a penchant for all things Gothly and horror movies.

Recently, my PS3 bit the dust.  This actually created a lot of internal turmoil - that thing was with me right after my sister passed away.  My husband gifted it to me, giving me something else to do other than work and sleep (and see my way through a handle of rum or vodka every other day or so).  It let me immerse myself in a game rather than dwell on the fact that I was now having to take time to go through my sister's things and get rid of much that was of no use to anyone anymore.

My sister and I gamed a lot.  Not....gamer girls, you know, the pretty ones that pose licking controllers or whatever, but actual female gamers.  I loved RPGs and puzzle games, while my sister loved platformers and action-packed games.  And we worked oddly well as a team that way.  When I played, she'd listen to me logic out stuff and make suggestions and vice versa.  When she was sick and living with my mother, I came to visit while I was training for Walmart in Dallas.  She was playing Prince of Persia, sands of time.  We had dinner and visited and she was suddenly hit by the notion of showing me the game, where she was stuck.  She showed me his cool abilities and how he moved and the area where she was stuck.  I was immediately focused.  After a few moments, I asked, "Did you run across the wall to that platform and try to run up that ledge and jump over?"  She blinked at me once or twice, then did it.  She shook her head.  "I've been stuck there for a week," she said in disgust.  And...that's kind of how we gamed.

My girls have grown up gaming.  One is very into Pokemon.  The other....into the same types of games my sister played - anything and everything.  Except she will play horror games.

Now, for those of you who don't game, there really is an entire genre of video games out there filled with blood, guts, gore, jump-scares and all sort of sick and twisted shit.  Really.  Stuff that makes most people's hair crawl.

At one point, I observed my youngest playing one of these games, so somewhere down the road, I got it in my head that she really likes them.  I can't even watch horror movies, much less play video games like that.  So living vicariously, I buy them for her.  When she sits to play them, she just makes commentary like, "Ohhhh......oh, that's not good...."  Or snarky stuff. "Yeah....so you took my hand.  I still have a gun."  I took this as fearless and really into it, so...I continued to buy those kinds of games when the PS3 died.

So after a few days, she's playing something called Ori the Blind Forest or something like that.  It's a beautiful game.  But the other night, I was like, "Honey, uh, why aren't you playing Resident Evil or Silent Hill or something?"

She looks at me like I've lost my shit.

"Mom, it's late at night.  Are you crazy?" she asks.

"I thought you liked those kinds of games," I replied, uncertainly.

"Mom..." she says, teen-splaining it to me, "yeah, but c'mon.  It's a horror game.  I won't be able to sleep tonight."

Then I realize she is actually gets scared with those games. And state as much.

"Of course I get scared. They're damn scary!"

I shoot her a sideways look.  For some reason, she's getting into the habit of using those words around me a little too fluently.  "Taindee....you mean to tell me that those games where something is trying to eat your ass or kill you actually scares you?"

"Of course, ma! Geez!"

So all that snark, all that very controlled conversation with the TV that sounds casual, is actually my child chattering out her fear and playing the game anyway.

Damn...I wish I could do that.   Even taking an anti-anxiety med, the idea of it sends my mind crawling up walls.

So every now and then, like I said, vicarious living - I hear her say something snarky and I have to walk through the room with my hands over my eyes, peeking a bit, as she fights the shit that was born of someone else's nightmares.

I do gotta say, I think we both kinda freaked out when the dude was running after her character with the chainsaw.  That was a bit much for us both, regardless of my meds.

So she doesn't play those games after dark and that's fine by me.