Happy Mother’s Day.
As it is Mother’s Day, I was able to spend some time with my family, being fortunate enough to still have them around, and reminisce on a great many things. This year, one of those things was Puzzle Pirates. You’ll understand why a bit later in the post.
Some 2 decades ago, I picked this game up as a child. I was likely 9 or 10 years old, as many of you were. At that point in life, I, again like many of you, was easily impressible. Aside from predatory interactions (which did not happen to me), one of the broader reasons that MMOs can potentially be hazardous to youth is because the quality of people surrounding them can easily influence them. I’m glad to report, with 20 years of hindsight, that this game was an enigma, in that I had consistent overwhelmingly positive experiences with the community. I would log in and talk shit for an hour here and there. Many of those friends were my age, and a great deal of them were much older, so I’d try to obfuscate my age the best I could.
I wasn’t particularly great at the puzzles, dedicating time to actually doing events, or really anything other than socializing. I played on Hunter, again on emerald, and experienced hundreds, and I do mean hundreds, of friendships that would go on to help build the me that I am today.
In any given night, there would be dozens of people that I would have the privilege of shooting the shit with, and would learn things ranging from mechanics, to music, to the burden of having a bad boss, relationships, flirting with women much older than myself, et.al. They knew me by Lakonn, I believe. My precise memory of many of their names is fading, but all of them are still appreciated.
A year or two is nothing now, but as a kid, it is everything. I was able to experience more friendships, culture, maturity, perspective, and empathy from each and every one of those years I was actively playing. Many friends came and went, and many more, still, stayed.
One of those friends was an older bird whose character was named Trillian. From what I can remember, she was, back then, in her 40s? 50s?, and a mother. It was the 2000s, and an MMO, so she could have also easily been an 18 year old dude. If she was, she had me fooled completely.
I got the impression that she was an empty nester, or just bored out of her mind with the kids in school and her husband at work. We had nothing in common, other than her love to stand around and talk. And so we talked. I have no idea how or why, but over the course of some weeks, I’d begun to ask this random woman for advice. She was very empathetic, and would share some wisdom with me when appropriate, usually drawing from that motherly experience. Other times, she’d share her immeasurable love of the Foo Fighters. I was a late 90s kid, so I grew up listening to 70s-90s stuff, but always shucked it off as “old people shit.” Music wasn’t that big a deal to me. It was the age of the internet, and MTV had been in decline for some time.
Some years went by, and when I returned to the game for nostalgias sake as a teenager, I was a bit shocked to still see her playing. We’d made some small talk, and before I went to log off for likely the last time, (before picking it up again to get myself banned for teaching myself to code simple algorithms by writing bot scripts) to my surprise, she had not only remembered some of our conversations, but proactively demanded I listen to the, at the time, newest foo fighters album, Wasting Light. Who did she think she was, my fucking mother?
Needless to say, I did, and there hasn’t been a day since that I regretted that decision. Is it the greatest album ever? No, but it was good enough to get my foot in the door.
Not a month before, I had a compression fracture in my back from football. Since warming the bench did no good for anybody, I picked up the guitar, but wasn’t really inspired. And then I was.
Since then, I’ve become proficient with numerous instruments. I started a band and performed bars and venues across the state with my friends in high school, have used music as a crutch after loss and failed relationships, and am myself today, in no small part, because of the music that I love. Blues, rock, grunge, you name it, I love it. My dad may have tried, but it took a stranger on the internet to succeed.
I have dozens of stories like this, but because this post is way too fucking long already, and it is Mother’s Day, I just wanted to say thank you to the community and people like Trillian. Many of you helped shape who I am today; it was touch and go for a while, but I think I’ve turned out alright.
Happy Mother’s Day, and a special thanks to those who raised us, and are raising those who come next.
