Chapter Three

    Moving to Boise meant more restrictions, which was my fault. I chose to be in special ed and was offered a chance to leave the class since I did not fit in. My friends were there and I opted to stay. The consequence of the decision was to be stuck in special ed with teachers condescendingly telling me that I’m an uneducated country girl.

    This was a joke because this high school went to my small town high school to print their school paper. The biggest joke of all was that my teacher told me how great Borah would be and that they had everything.

    Emmett high was actually ahead of the game. Borah provided zero opportunity to students and this was the first time I encountered racist teachers. I hated Borah and I couldn’t stand staying in my dad’s house.

    I immediately applied for a job at the movie theater and stayed away from home as much as I could. During a staff party I met my boyfriend. We both went to the same high school and had narcissistic parents.

    I came to the conclusion that my parents were not so bad. My boyfriend’s mother was very controlling to the point that her offspring were out of control. My boyfriend’s sister would run off to cause trouble as their mother listened to her phone conversations and consistently sent her to the doctor to check for STDs.

    This household had an obsession with technology. They knew about all of the upcoming computer parts, Internet speeds that had yet to exist, and loopholes. At the time, there were plenty of them.   If I never met Andrew, I wouldn’t be online today. In fact, I don’t think I would fully understand all the functions that the phones have. I wouldn’t really have any history with Internet.

    When we first started dating, I would watch him play games. This was my first experience with online gaming. This was also my first exposure to the Internet.    I think when we were first together; his mother had one dial-up connection in the house. Soon each member in the household had their own phone line.

    Some days, he started up his computer and got ready to play Warcraft with a couple of boys who lived down the road. He waited for them to come home and they simultaneously used dial up and waited for an open channel they could all play in.

    I never took much interest in most of the games he played. I got a chuckle out of the sound effects I heard from Warcraft and Code Red. I think I tried playing Code Red, but it wasn’t my favorite game.

    My boyfriend was always searching and waiting for the next best game. We looked at StarCraft which was similar to Warcraft, but in space. I got into playing Heroes of Might and Magic. I had fun building towns and walking through maps to fight monsters. My favorite was the mage because of Medusa. The Giants were really cool.

    I would spend hours playing games. It’s unbelievable where all the time went. When I wasn’t working, I was in Andrew’s basement playing games. I think that the people made Heroes of Might and Magic also created Meridian 59. Of course, we played that. I got a chance to play with people from all over for the very first time. I loved this game.

    We spent many hours playing Meridian 59. I built this awesome character with great stats. A few people started talking about a game that was similar called EverQuest. This game took a long time in the gamer world to be released. It took so long that some people called it never quest.

    We also interacted with people outside of online gaming. For social media we used this chat room called Idaho interactive. It was a colorful DOS style chat room. Time was also limited.

    We paid for time increments to be in this chat room. I think we paid for how many words we used. To pay more for more time we would go to this nerdy looking guy on State Street. Or was it on Chinden? Then we would come home and sit in these chat rooms.

    I remember someone who wasted chat on spamming the room with rockets made of letters and numbers. It almost seems like a work of fiction because we don’t pay for time limits unless you use satellite Internet services.

    We would go hang out with people from Idaho interactive. It really wasn’t my most favorite time. They would get together to play Magic. The cards were and probably are a big deal. Andrew would go searching for some of the most expensive or valuable cards to play Magic. When we went to play Magic, I would sit with nothing to do. They would be drinking and having a good time while I got very sleepy.

    I wasn’t really around anyone who shared the same interests as me. We shared an interest in games, but that was pretty much it. Other than that Andrew and I never got along. We would fight over stupid things like when he asked me, “do you know which way is south?”

    Toward the end of our relationship we started playing Diablo I’ve. I finally got to play EverQuest, but I hated it. Graphics for games were starting to get better. I picked up the habit of finding glitches in games.

    In Diablo, you could duplicate coins and armor. I did that enough to be able to win. We continued to play Meridian 59, but life together sucked.

    I couldn’t have my cat while living there. I could not have much. I didn’t have a computer. I moved back to my dads house.

    I think my brother was living there because there was a computer there. I got my own landline. I did get to play on my brother’s computer. We would watch video clips of South Park and play Diablo.

    I don’t think I got to play Meridian 59 again. Andrew sold the two characters that I was playing. I quit playing games online for the time being.

    I honestly don’t know what happened between then and the time I got hand-me-down computers. I know that I use my computer off and on and I was rarely online.