My First Time (Part 2)

So, as I said in Part 1, I reached a certain point in Chrono Trigger where, as a child, I was too unfamiliar with RPGs (and apparently problem solving) to be able to progress. And as I've done many time since then, I gave up and decided it wasn't my fault at all. "Fucking RPGs. I'm going to go rent Final Fight 3."

Now, I have actually finished Chrono Trigger, but I never finished it on that particular cartridge, because, you see, it was stolen from me by some shyster.

Hmm, is that word racist? I better look that up.

Through some form of magic, as a teen I had a handful of friends, and on one unremarkable summer day I found myself over at one of these friends' house. Paul was one of my older friends at this point, we went back to the time when he chewed on chairs as he turned around in his chair to talk to the young girl he had a thing for that week, while I sat beside her but spent more time playing with the little action figures I had painstakingly collected from Shreddie boxes over the last couple of months.

We were like, um, this.

Well sort of. You see, his parents thought Paul's underperformance in school (I'm not sure what their opinion of underperformance entailed, it could have been seventies for all I know) was a result of the public school system, or his public school system friends (i.e. me), so in the tenth grade, I believe, his parents decided to transfer him to the catholic school in town. Little did they know, however, that the mandatory skirts for the girls, and their inconsistent usage to cover ass, would likely be a shit tonne more distracting for him than hanging out with me at lunch playing euchre with people from a church youth group. Looking back on it, that was a stupid fucking move on their part. Oh well, they didn't ask for my opinion.

After that, Paul and I didn't hang out as much as we once did, partly because we didn't see each other at school everyday and partly because we now had separate groups of friends. But we still hung out occasionally when we made the effort to arrange a date. I mean a... yeah, a man-date. So on that one unremarkable summer afternoon when I found myself over at Paul's house, I also found another his other friends there as well.

I can't remember if I felt like the third wheel, if I felt like I had to compete for Paul's affection. It's probably funnier for the story if that tension exists, so yeah, let's say I was sort of put off by this other dude's presence. I mean, come on, I didn't get to see Paul as much anymore where this ass got to see him every day, and now I come over and he's here even on Saturday? Paul and he would have a conversation about Dave Matthews, and because I wasn't hip I had to think about how no one really wanted to talk about the new Jars of Clay album.

Now that I'm sitting down to write this story I remember that as the story picks up with Chrono Trigger we were on Paul's front yard playing A FUCKING GAME OF CROQUET!

Yep, as frickin cool as that. Ladies and gentleman: my teenage years!

The three of us, while not laying down our croquet skillz, ended up in a conversation about video games. Paul's friend mentioned Chrono Trigger and how great of a game it was and I, excited at the prospect of stepping up in the conversation, told him that I wasn't such a big fan, that I bought it as a kid and could never really get into it. He was surprised I owned a copy of the game and offered to buy it from me. At this time I had myself a state-of-the-art Nintendo 64 (with the red RAM expansion bitchez!), and so even the games I liked on the SNES were shoved to the back of the video game drawer. I agreed to sell it to him.

We abandoned our game of croquet, I think we were all losing anyways, and headed out for my house. We agreed on a sum of $5, which to me seemed like a great deal, having only spent $10 on it originally and not playing it for years. So I got home, collected the game and handed it over to the dude for the five bucks. We walked back to Paul's house and only much later did Paul's friend hint at the bargain he'd got. He mentioned in passing that Chrono Trigger was pretty rare and that if he was to track it down normally it would have cost him a great deal more. When I expressed some dissatisfaction as to our price point as a result, he made some comment about how that was only for a game in original packaging and that I didn't really play it anymore anyways. Even as I headed home later that night I felt a little dissatisfied, like Paul's friend had known a lot more about our deal than I.

And I certainly confirmed that dissatisfaction later that week when I got on eBay and checked the prices of second hand copies of Chrono Trigger. Indeed, they were a great deal more than $5, and that's not even including shipping.

I never saw that dude again. I can't even remember his name, but I do know he was a jerk, and I hope he enjoys the game he swindled from an ignorant kid.

Well, we still haven't got to the point where I beat Chrono Trigger, or why it sucks at all that some asshole ripped me off. Guess that'll be part 3.

P.S. I looked up "shyster" on Wikipedia and it says that the word isn't racist, that the anti-semitic origins are inaccurate. Mystery solved. So quit your bitching you shifty Jew!