Flashback. I'm in grade school. I had just moved to Connecticut - I had no friends or established cliques to hang out with. One day, I notice a kid sitting at a lunch table by himself. I ask the kids I'm sitting with why nobody is sitting with him. "He's weird", one kid told me. Another kid chimed in. "Yeah, he has no friends." Even at eight years old, I found this mean spirited and callous. So I decided to sit with him.
He became my best friend. Often to my detriment. I became known as "that kid who hangs out with *loner kid*."
This kid was a huge fan of video games. Not just any video games, either - he liked Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Star Ocean. Even if you know absolutely nothing about games, you can tell from the titles that those games are way off the deep end of the nerd spectrum. At first, I was apprehensive about being around him. The stuff he liked was weird. He wasn't playing normal games, into sports, or into playing outdoors like my other friends. He was introverted, he was shy, and he was sensitive. Looking back, it's not really a wonder that he was bullied and ostracized.
He used to play these games that were very heavy on plot and text. They required a lot of your time and attention. So, much of our time was spent playing games. We would rent a game - because that's what kids did back then - and we would talk about it at school the next day, kind of similar to how people at book clubs read books and then come back together and talk about them. We'd make predictions about where the story would go next, talk about what we did at certain points in the game, argue over what the best way to go about things was, discuss our favorite characters. This friendship lasted all throughout grade school.
One of the first games he introduced me to was Star Ocean: The Second Story. I remember him telling me about a dungeon he was at - The Hoffman Ruins. The way he described it made it sound really cool. Underground mine, tough enemies, the story starts to get interesting, etc. Things that sound cool to an eight year old. I rented the game and finally made my way there, and it did end up being a really enjoyable segment of the game. This is the moment that cemented my friendship with this kid, and made me realize that he wasn't weird - nobody took the time to understand him or really listen to what he was talking about. The music that plays in this section is called Pyroxene. It's a beautiful, somber, mysterious melody. It doesn't come across as well on its own, and it's definitely held back by early game console synth, and it starts off with an odd sound, but when you're listening to it in game, and the music picks up past its intro, it really adds to the mystery and exploration of that particular part of the game.
I would come back and replay the game later, for nostalgia. I realized something odd while playing through The Hoffman Ruins segment again.
It's full of Catholic imagery. Totally out of place in this niche Japanese game.
The following two biblical passages came to mind after seeing this:
Is. 58:10. "And if you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday. And the LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail."
Luke 12:44. "Sell your possessions and give alms; make yourselves purses which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
Am I reading into it too much? Maybe. Calling this kid afflicted is a bit of a dramatization, and I didn't sell anything but my chance at hanging out with normal kids. But damn if seeing that there did not have an effect on me.
Two major lifelong lessons I took from this experience, two unfailing treasures that I'll always carry with me:
Lesson #1: Don't judge a book by its cover. Both this kid and his interests ended up being something I initially thought were weird and abnormal, but ended up creating one of the best friendships I've ever had and introducing me to a hobby I enjoyed long after our friendship had ended.
Lesson #2: Helping others when they're downtrodden feels amazing, and you never sacrifice anything by doing so because you receive something so much better in return. I would have rather hung out with more normal kids. I was apprehensive at first. Once the ice had been broken, however, he became a legitimate friend. I at first thought I was doing him a favor, but it turns out that he "helped" me as much as I "helped" him.
Why did I name my blog after a track name in a video game? I did so as an ode to the most important life lessons that I ever learned. Convoluted reason, maybe. But it carries with it an intense personal meaning.
Apparently pyroxene is a type of mineral, so now my blog is named after a rock. The meaning is in the interpretation, though, so, whatever. It sounds cool, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment