...and thats how I met Lord Valain

Have you ever had a friend that you can link most of the oddities in your life to, and most of the major life decisions? That if you look back you can see a clear line where you’re life turned upside down because of them.

It was years ago. A fresh faced kid out of high school was in a game store looking to get a new game, a new old west game I’d recently heard about. He was standing there and we struck up a conversation, and this is how I met Lord Valain.

It’s important to note at this point I was both working and going to college, believe it or not I had aspirations to be a productive member of society, a mechanical engineer. While I was by no means Mr. Popularity, but I was in shape and I was dating a few girls. All in all life was great. Then I discovered something, like other people fall into drug addiction or drink their lives away I got hooked… on Romance of the Three Kingdoms 6.

Like many addictions it started off small and I though “Hey I can handle this”. I began hanging you with Valain, and falling into addiction and we both got hooked on ROTTK6. Valain was between jobs and I wasn’t…so I started to cut class. At first just ones I thought that weren’t important and then it slowly spread to all of my classes. I still managed to keep my job but I kept finding myself in a situation where I would play through the night at the game de jour and then go into work for the day. And like most addictions, ROTTK6 served as a gateway drug, I found that I had become a gamer. I remember one weekend in particular where I didn’t sleep, and showed up for work in the same clothes 2 days in a row. Yeah I was an addict.

So the natural course took over and I quit school and bounced around the job market and Valain moved out of town. Eventually I pulled my life together after getting a talking to by my old man. I was back to working, back into school finishing my degree, back in shape and dating again…and who should come back into my life but Valain.

Now Valain had set himself up as a computer programmer, something I had dabbled in, but only in an amateur way. Valain started telling me about a job opening he had. I finished up my degree and in the job hunt Valain offered me the most money. At this point I had a life, a girlfrierd Redhead and friends and family in the town I was in. Of course I ended up getting talked into moving by Valain, packed my bag and moved in with him.

My life changed but a lot of things were not immediately noticeable…I was still talking with Redhead a lot and she had family in the new town. There was even talk of her coming down to go to school here to. That all fell through when she felt that I was too distant and had to hook up with an old boyfriend. After that my appearance started to suffer and I went through was affectionately known as my hussy phase. I was looking at law school and Valain talked me into going to the local one. I had better scholarships, to higher rated schools…but he talked me into it. I can still remember his words “Come on Shameful, you’ll only save $30,000! It’s only $30,000, that’s nothing!”

Then after deciding to hang out and go to law school here, Lord Valain moved once more. So I’m stuck here in a town I don’t much care for in a school that I’m more or less indifferent to, waiting to graduate. And once again I have Valain talking to me “So I think I can get you a job up here. Come on you’ll love it here!” He might be right in most ways Valain and I are essentially the same guy; same tastes, same likes, same opinions (expect I’m more “liberal”). I’ve realized he’s been involved in most of my life decisions, all from the fateful day at the Nerdatoruim. But how could I be made at what is essentially me? I love me!

They say you hurt the ones you love, well it works both ways.