1985. My step-sister and I were on our way to the restaurant where we worked after school and on the weekends. We were in a little orange, 1982, hatch-back, Honda Civic. I was driving, and sister was in the passenger seat.

We left our neighborhood outside the town limits, and was cruising down the two-lane highway towards town. This road crosses a railroad track, and at this time the lights were flashing to warn of an approaching train. There was no signal arm to block the road, but as a smart and cautious teenage driver, I stopped at the crossing.

A short line of cars were stopped on the other side of the tracks; workers coming home after 5:00 p.m. No train was to be seen in either direction — and in this flat, open farmland terrain, we could see a couple miles or more. But there was a strange screeching and air horn sound coming from behind us. I looked into the rearview mirror just in time to see the big yellow front grill of an 18-wheeler.

WHAM! The truck slammed into us from behind, shooting us across the railroad tracks. It hit us at such an angle that we were flying right to the line of cars on the other side of the tracks, but in total instinct, I managed to wheel us to the right and away from another collision.

My feet had come off the brake and clutch, and we had enough momentum that I steered us off the road and into a business parking lot on our right. When we came to a full stop, my sister and I just looked at each other. “Are you alright?” we both asked. “I don’t know,” we both answered.

We got out of the car. The rear was completely crushed in such that had anyone been sitting in the back seat, they would surely be dead. Then we saw the 18-wheeled truck that hit us. It was jack-knifed up at the signal lights.

The truck driver was rushing over to us, and people were coming out of the business. “Holy crap,” I think I said. Comparing the huge size of that truck to the little size of our little putter, how did we survive that hit? How were we not even apparently hurt?

My sister went into the business to use their phone. (We didn’t have cell phones in those days.) I stood out by the car shaking as the adrenaline rush started wearing off. People were talking about the accident — what they heard, what they saw, how lucky everyone was.

Turns out the truck driver had already been down this road that day, and he knew the train signal lights were malfunctioning — had been signaling all day — and he just didn’t notice that our little car was stopped there until he was too close. He slammed on his breaks, and his trailer started to jack-knife, and that kept him from hitting us at full speed.

As I mentioned, it was after 5:00 in the evening, and the road was full of folks heading home from work. My mom was among those travelers. She came down the road and got caught in the long line of traffic waiting to slowly get around the scene. And then she saw our car, smashed all to hell, in the parking lot. When she pulled into the lot, she could see her son standing there, but she didn’t her step-daughter.

I don’t remember seeing Mom pull into the lot. I don’t remember much of anything more than a minute after getting out of the car and before being in the hospital emergency room. I think the shock and adrenaline rush overwhelmed my memory cells.

At the hospital, the emergency doctor gave both of us a look over. I had a knot on my head, and my sister had a sore neck, but we had no visible wounds or injury. The staff took some x-rays, but nothing showed up. My sister got a neck brace, but I don’t think she wore it 24 hours.

We were the talk of the area for a few days, as many people on their way home that evening saw our wrecked car and the jack-knifed truck. People were surprised then, and I am still a bit surprised today that we weren’t seriously injured in that collision. I mean, that truck outweighed us by a few tons, and shot us directly towards other vehicles.

I like to think it was my quick thinking that saved us, and others, from a second, head-on collision. But that would mean I’d have to say with a straight face that I did something other than think, “Oh shit!” and react purely on instinct. At least I didn’t mess my pants. That’s really the only heroic thing I can claim in that incident.

Bullgrit

My current gaming group has been together for going on 6 years. This is longer than any other group of gaming friends I’ve ever had.

I started regularly gaming (mostly RISK, Dark Tower, Mille Bornes, and Dungeons & Dragons) in late middle school, around 13 years old (1980). Our group of friends expanded and contracted through high school such that by the time I was graduating, at 17 years old (1985), my regular game group consisted of no one I originally started with. And then people (including me) started moving away to go to college.

Such was the case over the next several years: game friends and game groups came and went as college and work and life called us all. No group lasted as a whole for more than 4 years.

But then I managed to organize this current group in 2003. We were all full adults, with permanent addresses and careers.

This current group, at its largest, consisted of 7 gamers — 5 men, 2 women — but we’ve been just 4 guys for the past couple of years. We’ve talked about finding a 5th person so our roleplaying games could have 4 players and a game master (a well rounded group). But we haven’t actually tried recruiting anyone.

A few weeks ago, one of the guys mentioned that one of his World of Warcraft guildmates lived in our real-world area, and was looking for a D&D game. Hmmm. We gave serious consideration on whether to bring in someone new. Someone none of us actually knew in the real world.

After some discussion, we decided to invite this guy to join our game for a test run. We’ll all be meeting him for the first time this Thursday night when we next game. Only the one who met him in WoW has ever had any interaction with this guy, and that was all through the online world. All we know about him so far is that he’s 23 years old — almost 10 years younger than the current youngest in our group. (Our oldest player is 51.)

It’s kind of intriguing and weird at the same time. He may a completely normal, nice, intelligent, and well-adjusted fellow. Or he may be some psycho weirdo dressed in black. Or he may be some unwashed dork with no life outside of WoW. I don’t know.

Funnily, though, the thing that worries us the most (or at least a couple of us) is whether he’ll think we’re the weirdos or dorks. Having gamed together for over 5 years, we’ve all gotten used to each other. We sometimes crack some terrible, reprehensible jokes. We sometimes act like total 13 year old pubescent boys. In general, we’re sometimes just not presentable to respectable public society. So it’s quite possible that this new guy will find us unacceptable.

I can only imagine this tension about meeting someone new is how online daters feel. But then, at least they get to see a picture and read a profile to have some idea of what they might be getting into. Us, we’re true adventurers. I hope he is, too.

Bullgrit

When I started this site, I thought I’d be traveling a bit, that’s why I included the Travel category. In 2005-2007, I was in a job that had me traveling around the country 2-4 times a year. In 2008, I was in a job that was supposed to have me traveling out of the country twice a year. But I’m now in a job that has no travel at all.

I was never big on traveling before 2005. I was a confirmed homebody with minimal interest in figuring out the logistics and going through the effort of traveling. That’s not to say I didn’t travel. I did some, mostly to visit Cowgrit’s relatives (Texas, Arizona, New York), or to go skiing (West Virginia, Colorado), or for our honeymoon (Florida). But if I had had my way then, I would have just stayed home.

But then, after traveling some for my job, I started seeing the journeys as little adventures. Although some of the destinations could have been interesting (New York, Chicago, San Diego), I had work to do there, and my stay was only 2-4 days, so I didn’t get to see much of the locations.

The trips weren’t vacations. Besides, even when traveling, I’m apparently still a homebody. When I was in New York on business, I spent my 3 evenings watching movies (Lord of the Rings DVDs on my work laptop) and reading books (Honor Harrington series) in my hotel room. When I was in Chicago for nearly a week, I spent my evenings playing World of Warcraft (I made top level 60 at that time). When I was in San Diego for just 2 days, I went to bed early because the 3 hours time difference killed me.

I did get to see some of the areas, during the days, so I can honestly say I’ve seen the cities at least nominally. (I got lost in Chicago driving a rented car for about 3 hours.) But it was really just a nibble and taste, not a full course of the places.

I came to enjoy the travel experience. I was fine with the trips lasting no more than a week, no more often than 4 times a year. The airport experiences, flying over America, and checking into hotels actually became kind of fun. It broke up the sometimes monotonous daily grind of going to my office every day, every week, every month.

And then when I got another job at the beginning of last year, I was looking forward to the expected out-of-country trips. I got to go to Sweden last March, and that was the coolest business travel I ever got to do. I was supposed to get a trip to China, too, last year, but, well, it didn’t work out.

Now my new job has zero travel, and I’m finding myself missing that aspect of work. Plus is kind of weakens the whole Travel section of this site. At least I traveled to Disney World with the family, so I was able to file something in the category. I guess I’ll need to figure up some more travel with the family so I can add to this section.

Bullgrit

In the summer of 1981, I was 13-14 years old, my brother was 9 years old.

Our home during my middle and high school years sat on the back edge of a neighborhood outside the town limits. Surrounding the neighborhood was woods and farm land, and a few barns of varied structural integrity. One of the cool things, for kids, about living in tobacco country during that time was the ubiquitousness of tobacco sticks.

Find a barn, even an old, currently unused barn, and you would find at least a dozen forgotten inch-square sticks about four-feet long. One barn on the edge of our neighborhood was a mother lode for these sticks, with probably a couple hundred stored in bundles of a dozen or so. Tobacco sticks were perfect for imaginary swords.

At the time of this story, I and a friend had “gathered” a couple of bundles from that particular old barn. We had 20-30 swords ready to go in my backyard. For days we had major sword fights among all us kids. When a stick broke in mid battle, you had to run as fast as you could to the reserve pile, while your opponent chased you with his sword raised above his head, trying to strike you down while unarmed.

We were having one such battle in and around the tree house in the woods behind our home. It was me and my little brother (on the ground) against my psycho friend (up in the tree house). We were trying to storm the castle while he was trying to keep us at bay. It was all good fun until . . .

My little brother gave a short cry of pain. I stopped my assault on the tree house to see what had happened. Brogrit was standing on the other side of the fort holding his head, at his front hairline. His stick sword was lying on the ground where he had dropped it.

He was calm but had obviously gotten hurt. We called “time” on the fight, and I walked over to check on him. I think he said, “Ow,” but he didn’t seem anything more than just momentarily stunned. Then I saw the blood trickle down from under his hand. He took his hand away from his head, held it in front of him and looked at it.

“AAYYYEEE!” he screamed, at seeing his blood-covered hand. There was a lot of blood running down his face from his hairline. “Oh crap!” I said.

The battle, of course, came to a complete end as I got my little brother around the house to the front porch. It was a weekday afternoon and our mother and step-dad were both at work. I ran in the house to call Mom.

I don’t remember the details of the phone conversation, but I do remember our mom’s car coming racing up the neighborhood street before I could hang up. OK, maybe I was woozy from seeing the river of blood pouring from my little brother’s head, and I lost track of time. It might actually have taken Mom a whole 30 seconds to drive the normal 15-minute distance. Either way, she got there PDQ.

In my shock, I don’t remember anything right after that. I think I went to my room and laid down. Mom took her 9-year-old boy to the hospital where he got some stitches in his head. (Mom or brogrit will have to fill in those details, if they wish, in the comments below.)

The next day, Mom made us take all the tobacco sticks away — even the broken ones; especially the broken ones. We weren’t allowed to have those things in the yard anymore. So ended the glorious summer of the Knights of the Tree House.

Bullgrit