posted May 25, 2012 10:23 PM         

Two slides into my presentation in Biology 101, I zone out and begin to consider my mana base. The class doesn't know the material, but my professor won't let me present my project while I stand and ponder whatever it is I could be daydreaming about. My mana curve favors turn 3, if I'm playing against aggro, I can sit back with answers to their possible planeswalker turn 4. I could take a couple of Goblin Guides before I drop a Consume the Meek or Black Sun's Zenith. My professor is sitting at a desk, I'm in front of the lecture room, looking like a fool.
I slowly conclude my presentation and sit back down at my desk. Despite the mutterings of my classmates, today is Friday.
There's nothing that they can do to change Friday.
Friday Night Magic is tonight, and I'm not going to miss FNM.
Before my presentation, Chad from the chess team smiles with tarnished braces at the age of 19. Chad with his high school class ring shakes my hand and says, “I'd hate to play you round 1 tonight.”
The first rule about FNM is to bring your deck.
Before the slideshow, when I turn my printout in to my professor, he asks, “What do you do every Friday to make you zone out in class?”
I play a game, I say. It's no more rewarding to be good at sports. You see those jocks and their crowds of friends walking outside of freshman dorms after a big game and think, what a waste. All brawn, no brains – getting by on a football scholarship.
The second rule about FNM is to bring a friend.
Maybe at lunch you see the tallest kid on the basketball team dipping out his chili in front of you in line and all you can think about is seeing his Red Deck Wins take out Mono Green Elves in round 3. You recall him swinging out and topping it with a Lightning Bolt for game before the opponent could get Ezuri, the Renegade Leader online.
You don't say anything because FNM doesn't discriminate like the real world does.
You see a scrawny kid at the library reading Thor with a finger up his nose and normally view him as a nuisance, but this kid was a god for 50 minutes when you saw him stomp a football coach with a turn 4 Blightsteel Colossus. Every time you see this kid, you want to tell him what a great game that was.
Only two players to a match. 3 games per match. 50 minutes to a match, finals go on as long as they have to. Those are the other rules of FNM.
Who people are at FNM is not who they are in the real world. Even if you told the comic book kid that he played well, you wouldn't be talking to the same man.
Who I am at FNM is not someone my professor knows.
After a night at FNM, everything in the real world seems to hearken to Magic. Everything is new deck tech. Here you rule, and even if others push you around, even that doesn't undermine your authority.
In the real world, I'm a freshman college student in a sweatshirt and jeans, sitting at a desk daydreaming of a game and taking notesas I listen to my professor prattle on about God knows what.
It used to be enough when I needed to spur some thought to read a book or play computer solitaire. Someday, I'd be dead with nothing to show for besides a shelf of science fiction and a few pixelated numbers labeled “hi-score”. This is great, until the computer craps out and the e-book makes hard copies obsolete. No achievement is static if unrecognized. Even peasants had masterpieces. Since FNM, I can flip through pages of cards and thumb through boxes of thought processes.
Maybe the grind isn't the answer.
Poker players make millions on TV.
Maybe gaming is the answer.
I see the pairings go up on the wall and I'm at table 8.
“The first rule about FNM,” I tell myself, “is to bring your deck.”
“The second rule about FNM is to bring a friend.”
Me, I'm no model, but I have a girlfriend and a close group of friends. What you see at FNM is a group of people from many walks of life with a common interest.
“And the last rule,” I tell some trembling new kid, “is if it's your first night at FNM, you have to play.”
FNM is not poker on TV. You aren't watching a bunch of white collar snobs halfway across the country on television with an earbud in one ear and sunglasses.
After FNM, watching Poker is watching the Food Network when you could be eating.
FNM gets to be your reason for working overtime for a few extra bucks. The fast food joints you go to are full of kids working for an extra few bucks each week as if happiness was found in commercial clothing and junk food.
At FNM, even Fabio is ruthless. What happens at FNM doesn't happen in words. Some people need a game every week.
Last week, I saw that basketball kid and he and I sat down for a game. He must've had the nuts draw, got my life total ravaged by two Valakuts on turn 5. I shake the guy's hand and say, good match.
The guy says, “I hope we get paired again next week.”
I look at my totals game 1 and 2 and say, “I don't.” and we chuckle.
You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at FNM, when it's you and one other person at the finals table in the middle of all those spectators. FNM isn't about winning or losing matches. FNM isn't about words. You see a guy come to FNM for the first time, and his deck is total jank. You see the same guy 2 months later, and he's in the top 8. This guy could be on the Pro Tour. There are nerds at FNM like a comic shop, but FNM isn't about your other interests or your appearance. Everyone is welcome.
A lot of friends meet for the first time at FNM. Now I go to class and see faces in desks, honor's students and jocks and artists or journalists with the gears turning behind their eyes and a decklist on their desks.
We nod to each other.
Later, my professor will ask me how I know so many people.
Class goes on.
I see a straight-A student from my high school sitting at her desk, working furiously at something when the lecture hit a lull. I thought that she might be considering the processes of transcription and translation or cellular respiration, but probably not.

 

posted May 26, 2012 04:39 AM         

My trades
My sales

 

posted May 26, 2012 10:13 AM          

Anyone care to summarize it for me? Is it worth reading?

 

posted May 26, 2012 10:39 AM         

My trades
My sales

 

posted May 26, 2012 12:08 PM         

In other news, I am Jack's Smirking Revenge.

 

posted May 26, 2012 12:15 PM        

[19:01] <nderEvo> you can delete yourself