The Village Idiot
Simulated Suffering
Of the few games that grant their players sufficient freedom, the majority are too fantastical and over-the-top for my taste. Shooting space wizards is strange and impossible. Fighting to preserve the sanctity of long-lost kingdoms is about as consequential as it is realistic. Perhaps I’m too much of a sour cynic. Regardless, if I can’t see your game occurring within our real world, chances are, I won’t enjoy it.
Notifications
During our first week of work, all interns were made to take part in a presentation on operational security. We were warned that our supervisors could monitor our social media activity, and any online references to our work could land us in serious legal trouble. The presenter pointed to cases of interns being contacted via Facebook by foreign intelligence agencies and unintentionally compromising state secrets. Given my proclivity for communist jokes and the abundance of foreign nationals on my newsfeed, I subsequently decided to deactivate my Facebook to prevent misunderstandings between my employers and myself. Consequently, I was left with two social media platforms—Instagram and Snapchat—to communicate with my friends from home.
Playing the Wrong Game
However, about a month ago, a young man breached the seating treaty during one of my Thursday courses. Normally, I wouldn’t have cared; my early arrival to lecture guarantees me my preferred seat. What sets this young man apart isn’t his contempt for the unspoken laws of lecture, but rather how he led me to discover my greatest regret.
The Plight of the Self-Conscious Gringo
Our interactions with the pupusería were comical, to say the least. My father would enter donning his stoic face and silently direct me to the cashier. Casually, I would approach the register and order the usual with my pubescent voice: “dos con loroco, dos de chicharrón, dos de queso, y una bolsa de curtido, por favor.” The restaurant would fall silent for a moment as everyone wondered what a man as white as sour cream and his pale son were doing in a tiny pupusería, but eventually the sounds and smells of fresh food and good company refocused everyone’s attention. Minutes later we’d happily walk away, pupusas in hand (and sometimes an horchata or two), eagerly awaiting my mother’s return from work.
Pleasantly Grim
My passenger—a fellow grizzled cadet—yelled various creative obscenities as I dangerously approached the Zipcar parking spot. Smiling, I turned to him and threatened to drive the car into a street light, but at such an angle that only I would die, leaving him to inherit my responsibilities, as well as my smelly carcass. After a few seconds of silence, we erupted in laughter. I completed my dangerous maneuver, exited the car, and asked him if, perhaps, we had laughed too hard at my dark joke. His only complaint was that I didn’t materialize my threat. We stared at each other for a brief second, erupted in laughter yet again, drank some coffee, and went our separate ways.
