As many of you know, the lads from high school and I annually gather for one week during the summer to luxuriate in each others' company. This often entails binge drinking, video games, a disparate mixture of fast food and carefully crafted dinners by the various attendees, and binge drinking. On occasions there are also minor altercations, like last year, when one cultist playfully backhanded another gentleman's "swimsuit area" (like you do), to which the other responded by immediately standing...okay, wait. Every male reader knows you don't "immediately stand" after a shot to the mommy-daddy button, but let's just fast forward past the intervening moments of palpable agony this man endured. Ahem. So he stood, face jutting forward menacingly at his foe. Whenever confronted with such a threat, the animal portion of the brain makes its instinctive "fight or flight" decision, which I've always understood to be no decision at all. Apparently the victim's brain, wracked by agony as it was, misfired in some way and accidentally chose "fight." Thankfully nothing came of it. That shit will get you killed, yo.
What also has been known to merit the violent cessation of life is writing doggerel children's poetry for your Dungeon's and Dragon's group. You see, each year's ostensible purpose is not merely getting together again and acting like 15 year olds, but it's to get together and act like 15 year olds
and play DnD. Each year a different member is in charge of crafting and running the campaign, and this year I have accepted that most holy of mantles. My first communique to my victims was simply this:
The knave, the seer,
The bastard weird,
Approached the ruin black;
The smith and squire,
Climbéd the spire,
To turn the trio back.
When whence they left,
The former cleft,
That split them was no more.
Their purpose knit,
Their skill and wit
Averted certain war.
Rejoice, dear friends,
Our violent end
Has missed us by a hair.
But trust you not
This peace they wrought;
Our doom comes through their heir.
—children’s rhyme used to begin a game of “Heroes’ Choice”
See you all this summer.
Honestly, can someone explain to me how I found a woman willing to marry me? I guarantee that the second I post this, every person who has even felt a twinge of affection for me will feel a deep and palpable shame settle over them, like a quilt woven of horrible realizations.
I'd explain myself further, but the other members of the gang read this blog, and I dare not unpack my doggerel's pregnant lines for fear I accidentally let slip the glittering clue with which they might avert their doom. And that just simply will not do. I mean to destroy them all.
Argh. Even I rolled my eyes at that last line.
